


Eastward in Ironwood

by semaphore27



Series: Götterdämmerung 24/7 [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Feels, Brian Banner's A+ Parenting, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epic Friendship, Evil Plans, Falling In Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Intersex Loki, Language, Loki Feels, M/M, Magic, Mpreg, Mutant Hate, Nick Fury Lies, Odin's A+ Parenting, Parent Loki, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Prisoner Loki, Psychological Trauma, Tony Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-04-16 14:14:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 60,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14166645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semaphore27/pseuds/semaphore27
Summary: We last saw Loki seated on the throne of Asgard, disguised as his adoptive father Odin and, by all appearances, happy and secure.  Why, then, does Tony Stark find him crash-landed in Central Park, guarding three tiny babies he claims are his own. Is the god of lies telling the truth for once? Where have the babies actually come from, and what has made Loki so desperate that he'd not only beg for Tony's help, but actually swear a blood oath to him?Furthermore, who are S.H.I.E.L.D.'s strange new bedfellows, and how will their plans affect the Nine Worlds?In difficult times, friends pull together and those who were once enemies may well turn out to be something else entirely.





	1. Anthony and the No Good, Very Weird Day

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, please forgive me if I've made any German, Icelandic, or other language mistakes. I do what I can, but I always welcome input from native speakers and those whose skills are better than my own.
> 
> Secondly, I adore Alan Cumming and enjoyed his work as Nightcrawler (Kurt Wagner) in _X-2_. That being said, that's not the Kurt in this story, who has far more in common with the "Classic" (1980's) fuzzy elf of the comics.
> 
> Thirdly, the helicarrier still exists... or _a_ helicarrier still  
>  exists. Eventually we'll find out exactly why that is.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not a meteor.

* * *

Tony Stark's life changed in a really permanent kind of way when he least expected it--during the course of a meeting that wasn't really much of a meeting, more an excuse for them all to grab some breakfast together in Avengers Central.

Tony, needless to say, arrived fashionably late.  So late that notorious egg-thief Clint had already scarfed up every last remaining crumb of the cheesy scramble.  Even the toast (what remained of it) had gone cold.

"You snooze, you loose," Clint told Tony unsympathetically.

"Up late?" Natasha asked, in that way she had that managed to be snarky without actually sounding the least bit snarky.

Tony would have thought up a clever response--he'd already worked up a martyred, long-suffering expression--except that just that moment he'd glanced over Bruce's shoulder and out through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and glimpsed _something_.

In fact, a burning green _something_ that streaked at incredible speed between the tall (if not quite as tall as the tower itself) buildings of Tony's neighborhood.  On his best guess (which was generally a pretty damn good guess)  this glowy green projectile was on track to land, and land hard, somewhere in Central Park.

On (here Tony performed a rapid bit of mental math) Sheep Meadow. Probably. Give or take.

"What..." began Clint, who'd also been facing the window, "...the holy fuck was that?"

Steve appeared to be so stunned by what he was viewing he didn't even take the trouble to "language" their resident archer.

"Meteorite?" Tony forced himself to breathe.  For some reason his body didn't want to cooperate.  Dammit, he _wanted_ the glowing green thing to be a meteorite, maybe a piece of space junk.  He also felt about 98.7% certain that it wasn't, that it was something else entirely.

What that something might turn out to be, he hadn't a clue, and the uncertainty took him aback.

Tony didn't like being taken aback.  He liked to think of himself as the kind of guy taken abackness just didn't happen to. He liked to think of himself as blase, more the guy that if something was to be seen, chances were he’d already seen it--or could at least conceive of seeing it, in a pretty concrete way.

Been there, done that, filed the patent and obtained proprietary rights, that was how he rolled, thank you kindly.

This clearly wasn't one of those times.  He found himself moving toward the windows, then out onto the terrace as J. opened things up before him.  Below, the park wasn't exactly green at this time of year, August just ready to tip over into September and the cooler months ahead.  Most of the grass had gone so dry as to be a light beige, even blonde in some places.

Yep, he'd been right.  Sheep Meadow.  The parched grass burned merrily all around the point of impact.

There was no sign of any big rock, crashed vehicle or twisted chunk of space trash.

“J.A.R.V.I.S., old buddy,” Tony began conversationally, “What I’m observing down there on the Sheep Meadow… not so much a meteor, right?”

“No, sir.” J.A.R.V.I.S. paused, in what could almost have been taken as astonishment, if astonishment was an A.I. thing. He couldn't remember programming J. with a WTF? mode, but J.A.R.V.I.S. also definitely had his own style sometimes. “I believe I am in agreement with you,sir, that the shape is not a meteor."

"It looks like a guy."  Not for nothing was Clint code-named "Hawkeye."

"It is indeed a humanoid figure," J. confirmed starchily.  "Additionally, the humanoid figure in question appears to be Loki of Asgard.”

Which was so, so, so exactly not what Tony had expected, wanted or needed to have confirmed at this, or any other, time.

"Assemble?" Natasha asked.  Somehow she was all kitted out in her black leather jumpsuit.  Seconds before she'd been in sweats.

Tony sighed and summoned his own suit.

 

They took the QuinJet, partly for the defensive capabilities it provided, partly because they would have felt like doofuses taking the elevator downstairs in full uniform, then waiting for the lights to cross the street.  Tony flew.  Because reasons.

A weird feeling had come over Tony, a terrified, helpless, confused feeling that seemed to have come out of nowhere, and that also seemed to have nothing to do with the events happening around him.  The confusion--maybe--made sense.  After all, when he’d first glimpsed a small green fireball plummeting earthward, he’d (quite reasonably, he thought) been hoping for a nice, juicy little extraterrestrial rock packed with fascinating offworld minerals, one that might lead to an afternoon of ScienceBros! fun with Bruce in the lab.

What he hadn't expected (also quite reasonably) was the second coming of a pissy-albeit-stunning Norse god with a hoitytoitier-than-thou British accent and homicidal tendencies.

Because, for one thing… uh… dead, anyone? As reported by big brother Thor (currently not present) some time past, to the accompaniment of a great number of manly (or godly, if you like) SpaceViking tears.

Tony had felt bad for Point Break then (a little) because, hey, Loki was his brother (sort of) and losing himhad turned the god of thunder into a great, big, pop-tart munching sad puppy, and you really couldn't help but be moved by the sight of Thor weeping onto his strawberry toaster pastries. Not, anyway, unless you were Clint (Openly Gleeful) Barton or Natasha (This Is Neither Blood In My Veins Nor Mere Icewater But Deeply Chilled Vodka Too Expensive Even For Tony Stark To Afford) Romanov.

Saddest of all, after the Pop Tarts of Mourning, Thor had lined up fourteen jars of pickled herring in wine sauce (and three in mustard sauce) on the breakfast counter, slumped on a bar stool and proceeded to empty them one-by-one using a series of multicolored toothpicks. He accompanied his Scandinavian binge-food with a series of sad songs in what might have been Icelandic. He sounded like Bjork, drunk, and with a heavy chest cold.

You had to feel something for a man in that kind of pain.

Though with Coulson not exactly so dead, either, as recently reported, and Fury, ditto, Tony supposed it shouldn’t have come as all that much of a big-assed surprise to find out Thor's bro was also a member of the Resurrection Club.

“Anyone else wanna come back from the grave while we’re at it?” Tony announced to Sheep Meadow in general, breaking away from the QuinJet and swooping low for a better look, though still not committing to a full landing. “Shakespeare? You could break the news about who really wrote your plays. Tesla? You could nail Edison’s balls to the wall once and for all on the question of who's the number one Electricity Meister… And, actually, yeah, that would be so cool if you did come back, because I would be jazzed to talk to you…”

“The QuinJet in t-minus ten seconds, sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. interrupted gently. “Mr. Odinson in… perhaps… two point five minutes.”

“Good, good,” Tony replied absently, though he couldn't help but wonder, _Where the hell is Thor coming from anyway?_   He banked left and lost altitude to catch a clearer look, torn between curiosity and an increasing temptation to leave the mad and supposedly dead Asgardian to his big, blonde brother entirely.

Maybe they could hug and celebrate HerringFest before Thor once more slapped a muzzle over Loki's smart mouth and hauled his ass off to Asgard, like, pronto.

“Wassup, Iron Pants?” drawled a voice in his ear-bee. Clint, talking through a mouthfulof toast.

 _I like toast_ , Tony thought longingly. He felt as if he hadn’t eaten in decades.

”Yup, it's your old friend sure enough, Legolas. Tall, dark and crazy."

Clint sucked in a big breath, which apparently didn’t mix too well with his toast, since he spent the next thirty seconds--the entire time it took the QuinJet to set down, upwind of their unexpected godly visitor--hacking out a lung, someone else (Natasha, probably) thumping on his back.

When he could speak again, Clint growled out in a kind of choked-on-toast monster-voice. “I get to kill him first. And hardest.”

During Clint’s near-death-by-breakfast experience, Tony touched down on the grass himself, taking the opportunity to scope out the situation a little more closely. If the guy kneeling on the frozen lawn wasn’t Loki, it had to be his evil twin. Or maybe his not-evil twin? His Doppelganger?

Jet-black hair, check.  Alabaster skin, check. The whole “I am ridiculously tall, slender and elegant in my consummate evilness” vibe, check, check and doublecheck.

Only… Loki, who at their last meeting had been slim in a stylish male high-fashion model kind of way, was now skinny in a way that mostly just reminded Tony of Jack Skellington, with big dark circles around his eyes and equally dark hollows beneath his sky-high cheekbones. Also, Loki's hands shook, Tony noticed, just the slightest tremor every few seconds,  
and his eyes were so bloodshot (in the bottom of their deep, dark pit) they looked as if the so-called God of Mischief had been hungover for a week. Furthermore, what was going on in those eyes didn't look like homicidal world domination, it looked more like…

Tony took a step closer, then a couple more, which was crazy.

 _I’m hurt and I’m shit-scared and I’m too broken to run anymore_ , Loki’s eyes informed him—and Tony, who would have sworn he’d never believe a single thing that fucker told him, believed those unspoken words things absolutely.

Lying in Loki’s lap were what appeared to be three eensy preemie mutant babies, and as Tony watched, Loki picked up the middle one, shiny white like a seashell but smudged with pink, rubbed the baby’s little chest with his thumbs, hummed a bit against its skin and tucked it inside the shapeless cruelty-free-hemp-bag kind of thing he was wearing, caressing the little curved shape of her through the fabric. The one that was kind of roly-poly and silvery-browny-gray tumbled down into the vee of the kneeling god’s thighs and the third one, which was scaly and pale-jade-green  
worried at Loki’s fingertips with happy little hissing sounds.

“Are they yours?” Tony found himself stepping even closer, the endlessly sad dark green of Loki’s eyes filling up his vision. “Your kids? By the way, if you’re mind-controlling me, I swear I will fucking murder you.”

“Did you say kids, Tony?” Steve’s voice this time, sounding all Steve-o full of hope and courage,ready to save the day. “We have no visuals, by the way. And I’ve put in a call to S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Great.” Tony cracked open his helmet. S.H.I.E.L.D.? he wondered. We have S.H.I.E.L.D. again as, like, a functional thing? When did that happen? Did someone forget to text me?

Loki had started twitching in earnest now, hard enough that his head jerked back each time one of the spasms hit, little showers of sparks shooting down from his fingertips and the ends of his long, fried-out-wild hair. “What…” he ground out through clenched teeth, his lips chapped and bloody and raw. “Anger? Anger?"

He looked like he was seriously about to blow a fuse, like five seconds until gray matter erupted all over Tony's nice, shiny suit.

Loki looked as if he knew it, too. Tony could see the effort he was putting in just to keep his eyes tracking, sweat rolling down his ice-white cheeks, more and more red oozing in around his irises.

It reminded him (not a comfortable memory in any way, shape, or form) of old Mrs. D'Angelo. who'd owned the much smaller house next to his parents' big one, how she'd sit in her wheelchair after her bad stroke, glaring with desperate eyes and  
making this one terrible sound over and over and over again. Mrs. D'Angelo who could speak Italian and Latin and Ancient and Modern Greek. Who had been Chief Librarian for the whole New York City Library System.

Even at six Tony had known what that sound meant. _I am in Hell. I am in Hell_.

So, as the ultimate maraschino cherry of crazy atop his personal sundae of madness, Tony found himself ripping off his gauntlets, crouching down into an awkward Iron Man kneel as he gripped Loki’s arms, somehow hoping to prevent the crazy god of mischief and lies from going 'splodeyhead or seizing all over the teensy babies.

The babies who were not so much crying (which they were, actually, also doing- in tiny, frail bird-voices) as performing Act Five of The Twilight of the Gods in full chorus inside Tony's head.

Tony knew, too, whereof he spoke. Pepper had dragged him to a full performance of Götterdämmerung at the Met, probably as punishment (considering he'd been more than usually assholeish that week). That's when he really should have known Good Ol' Uncle Obie was evil and out to get him; he'd provided the tickets.

“What is _Angrbotha_?” Loki managed at last, in a kind of strangled roar, coughed a lot, spat out about a gallon of blood--some dark, some arterial red--and coughed some more.

And Tony, because he was a ridiculous kind of guy, stroked back Loki’s hair, gave him a little shake, then took the god’s face between his hands, the skin burning-hot and dry as sand, now, against his palms. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Rudolph. We’ll figure it out. Cross my heart.”

Loki, nine-tenths-of-the-way zoned out (clearly, by the amount of blood alone, if he'd been human he'd already have been pushing up daisies in a big way), gave him a look of pure alarm.

Maybe those words meant something different in SpaceViking.

Not far off, the frosty grass began kicking up dead leaves, twigs, clippings like whoa, and the sky took on a blurry, that's-not-really-the-sky-I'm-seeing kind of look.

 _Oh, goody. S.H.I.E.L.D._ , Tony thought. He knew the approach of a cloaked helicarrier when he felt one.

But wait? They still had the helicarrier, too? Obviously someone wasn't making evil organization takeover plots like they used to. Also, where was _his_ memo?

He clearly should have had a memo.

“Just a figure of speech," he told Loki. "Means, ‘I promise.’”

“Anthony Stark.” Loki’s voice now sounded like he had a terminal case of strep throat. “You… honorable.”

 _Not really_ , Tony thought, recalling a few of the choice words Pepper had said to him the month previous, just before she’d spoken the deadliest words of all, "We can still be friends, of course, Tony.”

To Loki, Tony only said, “Yeah?”

“A boon.” Loki glanced, frantic, over his shoulder. Tony couldn’t hear the Quinjet--or Mjolnir’s teakettle whistle, signaling Thor’s imminent arrival--not yet, but he’d be willing to bet Loki could.

Loki’s eyes locked on his again, and to Tony’s continuing surprise there still wasn’t the least sign of crazycakes in them—unless it was the sad craziness of total desperation. “Quickly, your hand!”

“Reward…” Loki coughed again, and spat out more blood. “...whatever you should ask of me, at any time, at any place, for as long as I shall live. On my honor as…” Loki’s mouth did something complicated and for just a second his sunken eyes glittered, almost as if they’d flooded with rigidly held-back tears.

But Loki wouldn't cry. Not Loki.

He was going to say “ _on my honor as a prince of Asgard_ ,” Tony knew suddenly, and for actually more than a nanosecond he felt truly, truly sorry for the guy. Families would mess you up, all right.

“On my life, my blood, my magic,” Loki said, and brought his left wrist up to his mouth, biting in viciously, though only one fat, pale-red drop rolled down into the cup of his hand. A hand Loki slapped, hard, against Tony’s palm, wrapping up Tony’s own hand in his freakishly long fingers.

The place where their palms met burned like acid.

“Please, Anthony Stark, I know well your agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will arrive here on the moment. They must not… They…” Loki’s eyes blazed with such intensity it looked like the inside of his head had caught on fire.

“They must not be harmed. They must not be…” the Asgardian paused, as if struggling for a word. “Vivisected,” he concluded, so softly Tony could hardly hear. “My precious children, Anthony Stark. Protect them. Thor must not carry them to Asg…”

Tony had totally missed the moment the rest of his team disembarked from the Quinjet--but, unfortunately for Loki, Clint’s wickedly-aimed kick didn’t miss. The sometime-prince went over like a bowling pin.

The babies probably didn't actually levitate. Probably not. It just looked like they did. It was a trick of the light, or the stress of the moment. Their tiny bird-voices cried on, though, and beneath that, on a level that had nothing to do with Tony's ears, came a song of such vast and terrible sorrow it made the hair on his head and arms and the back of his neck stand on end.

“Now that,” the archer said, standing back to survey the damage, “Was strangely easy yet satisfying. Who the hell’s kids do you think these are?”

Tony spun around, rubbing his burning hand, wishing to hell he could tell Clint what an assclown he was, maybe pop him one right in his vindictive grin.

Only that wasn’t exactly conducive to team-building, was it? And, fuck, he’d probably been at least partly mind-controlled, right? Loki must have tried to force him, coerce him, or done something. This was Loki, after all.

He couldn't possibly have just been what he looked like: a haunted man terrified for his kiddoes.

So, like the emotional coward he was, Tony just stood back and let the whole situation develop into typical S.H.I.E.L.D. Clusterfuck _Classique_.

Faceless (and by this Tony meant _literally_ faceless--was that some weird new stealth technology S.H.I.E.L.D. had started incorporating into their uniforms? and, if so, he wished they'd stop, because A) the tech sure as hell wasn't his, and B) looking at those blurred-out non-faces made him feel carsick) med personnel scooped up the very mutant-looking babies in a way that Tony couldn’t help but think looked slightly less nurturing and slightly more furtive and sinister.

The Faceless Ones were just about to trundle the babies away to parts unknown when Thor jumped out at them from one side, insisting that these were his brother’s children and as such citizens of Asgard protected by all things obscure and grandiose, while, from the other side Bruce appeared to earnest at them (and anyone who would listen) that these were very, very tiny, tiny innocent little babies and no one knew who they belonged to and what if their mommies and daddies were missing them  
terribly somewhere?

Clint, meanwhile, used the opportunity to “nudge” Loki in a few different places with the toe of his size twelve combat boot to “wake him up.”

Steve finally gave Clint a disapproving headshake, hoisted the still-twitching Asgardian over his shoulder, and they all repaired to the helicarrier for breakfast and a debriefing.

__

* * *

  
Tony sneaked out of the debriefing early for the simple reasons that the coffee tasted like battery acid, the bagels were Sara Lee (because nobody could possibly sneak down to a reputable deli for five seconds while hovering invisibly over Manhattan?) and nothing new had been said forthe past ninety minutes.

Bruce had already proven his superior intelligence by scooting before those ninety minutes even began, with the perfectly legitimate excuse that those babies weren’t going to experiment on themselves.

Tony went seeking and found his ScienceBro in the Med Lab, talking on the S.H.I.E.L.D. equivalent of Skype (the fuckers refused to use StarkTalk, probably on the well-founded assumption that Tony would wantonly eavesdrop on every single conversation he chose to listen to) with a great, big, furry blue guy wearing John Lennon glasses. The S.H.I.E.L.D. lab rats from before--those of the partially-erased faces--were nowhere to be found.

Both Bruce and Mr. Furry noticed Tony’s not-quite-unobtrusive-enough lurking at the same instant, which caused Mr. Furry to snap out that he’d “send someone” and instantly sign off.

“Who was Big Blue?” Tony asked, fiddling randomly with Bruce’s equipment, the way he knew made his friend crazy. He found himself amused to discover that Bruce had improvised a baby incubator out of something that appeared to have once been a movie theater style popcorn machine, plus a sheet of memory foam. Inside it, where the popcorn normally have gone, the little seashell girl’s hands and feet were moving in slow, random patterns, like seaweed drifting in currents on the ocean floor, the snaky baby was snapping his tiny jaws to show a set of wicked teensy teeth (they paired nicely with his wicked teensy velociraptor claws), and the furry one just rolled around in a little black-brown-and-silver ball of cuteness looking  
soft and harmless and hungry, gumming the memory foam and his own paws? Hands? Feet?

All three were clearly humanoid and just as clearly… not human.

“Hank McCoy.” Bruce came up behind him, watching the babies through the glass. “Dr. Hank McCoy. He’s a genetics specialist… among other things.”

“Huh," Tony responded.  "Mutant goes without saying. X-Man?”

Bruce sighed, gesturing at the kids. “I’m at a loss, Tony.”

“Loki told me they were his.”

Bruce turned to give him a full-on, _And you didn’t mention this at the meeting why?_   look.

“Hey, he’s the prince of lies!” Tony fibbed—sort of. “I figured…”

“God of lies,” Bruce corrected absently. “Satan, traditionally, is the Prince of Lies.”

“God, prince, whatever. They both have horns. At any rate, Mr. God of Stylish Evil told me they were his kids and he wanted them protected. No Asgard, no...” Tony glanced down at the three weird babies and, okay, they weren’t ever gonna be Gerber models, but they had their own kind of funky charm, and the thought…

“No vivisection,” Tony concluded, through the weird lumpy thing currently taking up most of the space in his throat. Because humanity sucked, sometimes, and so, he guessed, did Asgardinity. Damn, they were only babies, Loki-babies or not. They were only babies, and they didn't deserve to start their lives with random bad things happening to them. They just didn't.

The little shell-white girl’s face turned to Tony’s, and she blinked at him eyes of beautiful, rich dark-green--like malachite, not at all the muddy blue-gray color new babies' eyes usually tended to be.

“With that I most heartily agree,” said the man who dropped down, apparently from the ceiling, to land directly at their feet, while Tony made a sound something like, “ _Whoahaaaaha!_ ”

As one does when a blue demon appears before one out of positively-fucking-nowhere.

Tony clutched at his chest where the arc reactor used to be, kind of wishing he still had the damn thing to get his poor abused ticker jump-started again.

“Speaking of Satan,” Tony muttered under his breath, while his good, dear, kind friend Bruce laughed his khaki-clad ass off at Tony’s expense and the blue demon—who was about Tony’s height, though buff to an extent that ought to have been criminal—gave him a look that clearly said, _Yeah, like I never heard THAT one before._

Apparently, though, he was a good-natured demon, because he merely shrugged, blinked his headlight-yellow eyes a time or two, snaked his forked tail back and forth, and commented, _“Ach, meine lieben Herren_ , your S.H.I.E.L.D. maintains shockingly bad security! It’s no wonder they were overrun by Hydra and nearly obliterated. _Guten Morgen_ , Bruce, _Herr_ Stark.”

Obviously, Tony decided (once he’d finished coming down from having the living ever-loving crap startled out of him) Bruce had scheduled a “Befriend a Blue Mutant” Day and not let him know.

“Good to see you, Kurt.” Bruce leaned past Tony to give Mr. Indigo a nice, soft, squishy hug, which Mr. Indigo and (his tail) reciprocated fully, then the two of them proceeded to compare notes (apparently) in rapid-fire German, leaving Tony feeling out-of-the-loop, ignored and insanely curious, especially when Bruce started pulling up a series of files on his laptop and Mr.  
Blue did this totally effortless little leap up to Bruce’s worktop and perched there, one hand on Bruce’s shoulder, his messy curly blue-black head practically cheek-to-cheek with Bruce’s messy curly dark-going-silver one. The tail waved around behind him as they talked as if conducting a Beethoven symphony, and once even reached along the worktop to hand Bruce an instrument he’d apparently asked for.

 _My ScienceBro! Mine! Mine!_ tantrumed the devils of Tony’s worse nature, and to relieve his feelings he stuck his tongue out at the backs of their two curly, ScienceBro-cheating, German-speaking heads.

At which point Tony realized that the mutant had executed an about 120 degree body turn and was looking straight at him, a fair amount of amusement in his hard-to-read yellow eyes. He made the dismount from Bruce’s counter not just by jumping down, or scooting off on his butt like a normal person, but in a full-on backflip from crouching position, landing lightly on the balls of his feet.

“Let’s see, shall we?” he said, in English (for a change), and sent his tail in over the top of the popcorn popper to scoop up the little snaky dude.

Tony was half hoping the tiny claws and teeth would do their thing, but the baby seemed perfectly content, especially once it was nestled in Mr. Indigo’s two-fingered hand, its tummy being rubbed by Kurt’s other thumb. “Bruce, left shoulder? The kit’s in the pocket.”

Tony didn’t really want to know how Bruce happened to know the location of every hidden pocket in the mutant’s tastefully sprayed-on red-and-black uniform. He’d pass right over that one—especially as he watched his friend partially unseal the uniform’s front to reveal a slice of velvety blue chest and reach inside, retrieving a miniaturized but standard-looking DNA testing kit with three vials.

“Would you like to do the honors, Tony?” Bruce asked, with one of his crinkled-corner-of-the-eye smiles. He was too nice a guy to leave anyone out deliberately, so either…

Tony stilled, the miniature vial in his hand, even the baby looking up at him expectantly, as if saying, _Okay, get on with it, swab me already._

“Tony?” Bruce nudged gently.

Tony swabbed, if only to win himself thinking time. Snaky baby’s tiny tongue followed after, tasting the air. Following the day’s theme, that tongue was bright cerulean, and delicately split at the end.

“Poor _kleiner Junge_ , so hungry,” Kurt murmured, skritching his nails down Snaky’s delicate jade scales.

“I checked with New York Presbyterian NICU and followed instructions.” Bruce had on his sad face.

“Disaster, _ja_? You don’t like the food much that these humans give their babies?” Kurt kissed the top of snaky boy’s head, causing minute green frills to fan out where a normal baby’s ears would be. “Ah, but you like that though, _ja_ , Jӧri? It’s good to be loved, _Liebling_? Just like anyone. Just like anyone…” His voice trailed off and he appeared lost in thought, the baby cuddled under his chin.

“Jӧri, huh?” Bruce gave the mutant’s shoulder one of his patented sympathetic Brucie-touches. “What’s our little princess named?”

“Hela,” Kurt replied, still a million miles away even as he opened his hands to accept her. “And, unlike her brother, she’s not fond of the light, neither the brightness nor the heat of it. Like her parent, she prefers the shadow and the cool, though _kleiner_ Fenrir…” Kurt’s tail scooped into the incubator for the tumbling fluffball. “Fenrir is happy with anything.”

“Hey, hold it still, willya?” Tony griped, finally grabbing the frisky tail just above where it looped to cradle the furry baby, shuddering a little because the appendage just felt so damn weird, not like a dog or cat or rat or any other kind of tail—maybe more like a snake if the snake in question wascovered in velvet and had four times as many bones as evolution intended, along with packets of extra muscles and nerves that basically made it function as an extra hand (besides being incredibly  
strong).

Tony would very much have liked to study it for engineering purposes. Maybe a bot with a tail?

And maybe Tony needed to let go already, so that the mutant would quit giving him an, _Unhand my own personal tail, rude sir!_ kind of look.

Tony completed his swabbing in record time, while Bruce unsealed a sleeve-seam of Kurt’s uniform and used the bare (fuzzy, indigo) skin to take a couple vials of blood, then resealed that seam with the testing kit—including a fourth thin vial containing what looked like a single black hair—securely into yet another hidden pocket.

"I'm just just grabbing Kurt's blood for a point of comparison," Bruce said. "He has shapeshifter and magical heritage."

 _Well, of course he does_ , Tony thought, as the mutant gave him a sunny smile.

“As we discussed, Bruce?” Their blue visitor's accent, weirdly, sounded thicker than before, like maybe he was a wee bit nervous about something, or had his mind elsewhere than on his excellent English-as-a-second-language diction.

“Did you want another peek?” Now Bruce sounded nervous too. “And the other… It won’t drain you too much, right?”

“You know well, _mein Freund_ …” Kurt brought Fluffball across to his chest to join his tiny brother and sister, holding the three lightly but snugly with one arm as he gave Bruce a last bright, fangy grin. “I’m not one to lose myself easily.”

“Go with God, then,” Bruce said, which was actually kind of a funny thing for an agnostic to say to a demon, any way you thought about it.

“And you, Bruce,” Kurt said softly, “And you. A pleasure, _Herr_ Stark.”

He vanished just as abruptly as he’d appeared, only with one hundred per cent more fire and brimstone.

When Tony finally finished blinking the worst of the black spots out of his eyes, and had managed to make his jaw undrop, he dragged a folding chair out from the folding Med Lab table, taking extra care to scrape the metal feet along the concrete-faced metal floor with that special, special sound that made Bruce’s skin crawl. Once seated, he used his feet to push a second chair out for his so-called friend.

“Lucy,” Tony said, “You got some 'splaining to do.”

Bruce regarded him for a long time, brows all puckered together and a big, sad frown on his earnest face.

“I fucking hate S.H.I.E.L.D.,” he said at last. “I loathe their attitude of anything-for-expediency and the-ends-always-justify-the-means and the way my best friend in the world is sitting there all, ‘Heeheehee, Director Fury, sir, isn’t Brucie funny with his silly soft-headed liberal ideas, no need to take them seriously.’ Because when it comes to my rights and your rights and anything else guaranteed under the Constitution to protect us, it all just flies out the window where Fury and his  
gang are concerned. And how that makes them the good guys and Hydra the bad guys, damned if I know.”

Bruce had been breathing hard, looking a little bigger and a little greener with every minute that passed—until he suddenly just seemed to deflate.

“You know they’ll have recorded that,” Tony said quietly.

“Bye-bye First Amendment rights,” Bruce answered bitterly.

“Oh, boys, so little faith!” An auburn-haired young woman undulated gently through the cameras, and the struts behind them, accompanied by a miniature fireworks display of sparks.

“Everything hacked, altered, looped or fried as appropriate," she added cheerfully. "I wouldn’t overuse it lest--you know-- suspicion, but codeword “Lockheed” will give you some privacy if required. And, Mr. Stark, I’d really, really love an internship, so I’ll send you my C.V., okay? Name’s Kitty Pryde. Gotta catch Kurt. Seeya soon! Bye!” She trotted away in midair, passed  
through a wall and was gone.

Just like that.

Tony slumped in his ass-hurting metal chair, rubbed his eyes several times and wondered if he’d managed to suffer blunt force trauma to his brain at some point during the day. Maybe overenthusiastic Clint had managed to bowling pin him, too.

“I’m tired and it’s not even noon.” Bruce slumped forward to faceplant himself on the table.

“Fucking Reindeer Games,” Tony groaned. “Why did I get up this morning? Remind me?”

“To spend time with your BFF and to meet some fun and interesting new people?”

“Sure,” Tony said. “That must have been it.” He turned his head to glance at the repurposed popper, where the gentle yellow light shone and three tiny babies yawned and wiggled and waved their little arms and legs and claws and things. “Umn…”

Bruce laughed. “If Peter Jackson’s people can make Gollum, Kitty Pryde can rustle up a few Loki-babies.”

Tony peered in and around the improvised incubator, trying to find some sign of a beam, projector, laser, anything. “To hell with the internship," he said at last. "I might just have to marry that girl.”


	2. Tales of Asgard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We take a headlong trip through unexplored parts of Loki's past. Tony sees a whole other side of Nick Fury.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter in which the non-con warning comes into play. It's very much  
> non-specific, no details given, but unpleasant happenings _are_ strongly alluded to.
> 
> I play pretty fast and loose with Norse Lore in this chapter. Those with an strong attachment to the traditional figure of Baldr it might not find this chapter quite their flagon of mead.
> 
> "Spin" is a way of telling a story that aims to elicit a particular response from the audience. It's generally heavily biased, with a flexible approach to the truth.
> 
> I used the Icelandic word " _fjanndinn_ " incorrectly in the original posting and have since learned better. If anyone knows the correct way to drop the "f-bomb" in Icelandic, I'd love to know.
> 
> The musical _Les Miserables_ aka "Les Miz" has been in constant production for the past 20+ years, the second-longest playing musical in history. It only _feels_ like it's been playing since before Steve went into the ice.
> 
> Hinky=dishonest, suspect, unreliable, corrupt

* * *

There is _Ginnungagap_ , full of mists, containing nothing, containing absolutely everything that would, or will, ever exist, a paradox of infinite possibility.

There are the _Nornir_ Three, each a _Jӧtunn_ as Loki is a _Jӧtunn_ , forever spinning their many-colored threads, woven all around in _seiðr_ and light, surrounded in death, fate, life. Surrounded by a vast wealth, a dragon’s hoard, of stories. Urðr: all the stories that were. Verðandi: all the stories that are. Skuld: all the stories that must, someday, be.

Once there were two princes…

Is that not how this particular story starts?

Once there were two princes: one was light and one was dark. One was good and one was wicked. One was powerful, bold and courageous. One was slender, devious and and sneaky.

One fought bravely, with weapons, like a man.

One fought cravenly, with magic, like a woman.

For it is always better, is it not, to bash, to break down, to destroy? How untrustworthy, to spin out one's Craft with knowledge, discipline, skill. To spin out the _seiðr_ , the cords such as the all-knowing _Nornir_ themselves spin, which is the essence of life itself.

Besides, that is not the _real_ story anyway, only a small, fractured sliver of the looking-glass, a later bit from a longer tale.

Before--long, long before--there were four brothers, whose father was a wizard and the king of a mighty race.

Hӧðr was the eldest brother, heir to the throne. He had a heart as big as the Nine Realms, but does not a big heart often mean a blind eye?

Poor Hӧðr. The good should be rewarded, should they not? Good ought always to triumph.

Poor Hӧðr.

His father’s bastard (a fifth brother, anyone?) grew to manhood in a day, it is told, and then slew Hӧðr dead.

Baldr was the second brother, bright as the sun, and so beautiful, so beautiful, he could easily blind all who looked his way.

Everything Baldr had was the best— _Breidablik_ his wondrous hall, his miraculous ship _Hringhorni_ —and yet he wanted more, always more.

What was it that rotund Midgardian, Winston Churchill, said? “ _History is written by the victors_?”

Baldr was not, perhaps, the victor in the end, but by the _gods_ he got himself some glorious spin—two people ruined, two butchered children, two centuries of blindness and agony, ignominy and shame, alone in the dark except for sweet Sigyn…

Poor, poor, poor Baldr, the blessed martyr. Gods forbid he should keep his bedamned dripping cock in his breeches. _Nornir_ forfend he own up to his wrongs, not twist and turn and twist his tales like Niðhoggr the dragon through the roots of the world tree, ruining everything.

Poor Baldr. What was his terrible punishment, what his fate, as his young brother writhed beneath the mountains, and poison scalded away his face?

“Walk out into the worlds, my son Baldr, and learn,” their father said.

And to Loki, “For the tempting of your brother, your unnatural children and your unnatural flesh, I give you these three sharp stones for your bed, the guts of your little son for your sleeping-cloth, and a serpent’s venom to water your skin. From now, Loki, and forever, until the end of days.”

Perhaps Loki would be there still, had not their mother intervened.

The gods observe this: there are times hate will burn hotter than a serpent’s sting.

Thor was the third brother, younger than his elders by centuries, the boldest and most boisterous, inclined to act first and think after, though no true darkness ran in his veins. Thor, striding bravely through life, noticing nothing, accepting everything. What a fine thing to be Thor! Happy Thor!

Loki, aforementioned, was the youngest brother of all. Now and then Thor would tell him, jesting, that their mamma found him one day abandoned beneath a rock by her garden shed. There was something very, very wrong with Loki. So wrong, in fact, he wondered, sometimes, if Thor could be right after all. How could he be one of them?

Sometimes Loki dreamed his eyes were rubies. Sometimes he dreamed his skin was the blue of clear midwinter skies.

Except that was very wrong and bad, because only the  _Jӧtnar_ were blue.

Everyone said the  _Jӧtnar_ ate babies, had physical congress with their mammas, possessed shockingly poor table manners (worse than Volstagg’s, even) and ignored even the most basic laws of hospitality.

Everyone was older and wiser, they must have known.

Loki, now and then in the night, would rise and go to his looking-glass, where his bright and two-hued _seiðr_ wove, twined, rippled, danced around him while the shifting of his skin made him a beautiful girl, a beautiful boy, a person who was neither, or both, but still beautiful, still right, for just that short time, and alone, lovely in his own eyes.

He could not be right. He must somehow be something dreadful. Why else would his father’s gaze hold such disgust when it turned Loki’s way?

Loki tried so very hard, when he was young, to please everyone.

Though his great mistake had been in trying to please Baldr in the first place.

After, after the endless dark time, when they had finally let him out, freed him (or so they said) from the dark caverns, and the serpent's venom, and the depths of his own pain and terror and grief, Loki kept to his rooms for nearly a century, hideous in truth as his face grew back again, and then his eyes, which were useless for a score of years more. What would be the use, after all, in venturing forth, only to lose himself amongst hostile strangers?

Who was he meant to depend on? His mother? Thor?

_When I ran from them, brother_ , Loki would think during that decades-long night, _I fled as a fish through the rivers, a great, bright salmon flashing so fast through the waters I nearly escaped. Only you caught and held me, Thor, so tightly you squeezed the breath out of me, and I could not move or speak.  And then the Allfather broke me entirely._

_What,_ he often wondered, after all that, _Would ever be the use of anything?_

Without his sight, there was no _seiðr_. Without Sigryn or the boys there was no light, no sweetness, no wild goats, no meadows, no ruffled mushrooms or honeybees, no innocence, no peace. Without them the poison never stopped. Its ceaseless drip, drip, drip continued each night and every day, long after the serpent had supposedly gone. His mother’s exclamations of, “Sweet Loki, my poor dear boy,” meant nothing to him. Where had her voice been when Baldr lied and lied? She had saved face, saved family honor...

But she had not saved him.

“I am not sweet,” Loki told her then. “I have had the sweetness poisoned out of me. Bring me my beautiful boys, mother, my Narfi and my Vali, and perhaps I will be sweet again.”

Frigga, weeping, left him then, and not until weeks turned into years did she return to him.

She did not come to him now. He knew no comfort, only pain.

Loki found himself drifting in his mind--back to the last days of his innocence, back to that little cave where he and Sigyn, Narfi and Vali, had dwelt in simple peace. He had thought as a child, then, most certainly--like a Midgardian babe playing houses with Sigyn (his elder by twenty years, which was scarcely more than a Midgardian sevenday), giggling in happy play for hours with his small sons—oh, his little plump pink laughing ones!—gathering berries, honey, wildflowers from the woods and fields, charming the wild goats for their milk, picking the ruffled mushrooms…

So sweet, so sweet, so sweet…

Loki would not allow himself to weep. Not now. Not then.

 

He forced himself to waking, in a harsh, unyielding present that made no sense to him. A present with no real meaning, because he knew that always, always the page would turn, the page always turned, spinning him back, back into those terrible years—why, still, after all the centuries?--his baby son’s innards, turned to iron, binding him to the stones, Sigyn’s shrill cry as she turned to empty her little bowl and the venom splashed over her once soft, pretty hands, Loki himself choking on the cries he did not, did not want to utter, knowing he would never be able to hold them in.

His eyes burned.

His eyes were being burned from his head.

Or perhaps it was only the strain of holding back the tears yet again, when he had such cause for weeping.

Soft fingers stroked his lids, his brow, such a soothing touch, like fine velvet cloth. A kind blue face gazed down upon him.

A kind face, and blue? A kind _Jӧtunn_? It could not be!

_Jӧtnar_ were repellent creatures.

_He_ was a  _Jӧtunn._

“Loki, I’m a Midgardian," said the owner of that kind face. "My name is Kurt. You met me once, some years ago, but only for little while, so perhaps you don't remember?”

Loki thought he would be more likely to recall a blue Midgardian than a pink or brown one, yet he had no memory of the meeting whatsoever. Was it because he felt so wretched, his _seiðr_ and every other magic he possessed flowing at such a low ebb? The place where he lay felt too hot, so hot that sweat drenched his skin, and also the rude clothing twisted about his body.  Lights, set high in the ceiling above, shone so brightly they stabbed sharp as daggers into his eyes, and all over was a sense of being netted up in thoughts, dreams, words, stories. A sense that a great killing wave of the past was soon to rise up, carrying him away from all foreseeable paths.

“I’ve brought your little ones back to you,” the blue mortal told Loki. “They’re very hungry. Would you like to feed them now?”

_Narfi? Vali?_ Loki thought, knowing full well it could not be the first sons of his body, could never be them again.

With a little smile, the blue man helped Loki to sit upright on the metal shelf where he had been lying, his back against the metal wall. Loki wanted to snarl at him for his smiling--to demand of him, _do you mock my weakness? mock my pain?_ \--yet he held back his angry thoughts.

The Midgardian, Kurt, meant to be kind, to reassure Loki that he would be safe in his company. In all the Nine Realms, some few were like that, creatures of innate kindness. Sigyn had been such a one.

“You are like Sigyn,” Loki murmured, trying not to strain his throat, but even those few words set him coughing again, spitting out blood and struggling to breathe, until all he could do was lie against the wall, gasping, only Kurt’s strong arm holding him upright.

He wanted to weep from the pain in his head, his chest, his belly—especially down low in his side where bold Jӧrmungandr led the others out into the world (it being far too soon for things to change as they would naturally, in their right time, have changed, and Loki too weak from the escape to make them passage).

“Am I?” the mortal asked, in due time. Moving down the shelf, he took up a blue cup of no beauty and a spoon of base metal, using it to deliver a little shower of ice crystals onto Loki’s tongue. He had never felt anything more blessed. After two more spoonfuls he could speak again, with care.

“There’s magic here.” The tug of it disturbed him, the way certain Midgardians were said to abhor the scrape of nails on a board for chalk-writing, or a spoon of base metal on the bottom of a metal pot. There was no elegance to the Craft. It was sticky, revolting, mad. Loki’s lip curled with disgust as it touched his senses.

So very like the touch of Thanos inside his mind, as the Mad Titan broke down blocks, walls, private places, filling Loki with his many, many lies.

_Freedom is an illusion…_

“I am your brother.” Baldr’s fingers tracing ever-so-softly along the line of Loki’s shoulder, down his arm. “I would never hurt you. I only want what’s best for you, don’t you know that, sweet brother?”

Odin bellowing at him, his face in Loki’s face, the one crazed bright-blue eye. “Do you believe we need a god of mischief and lies, Loki Odinson, that you spread such falsehoods about your fair brother?”

His youthful self, screaming back at the Allfather, “I hate you! I hate you!” and meaning the words with such entirety of his heart, mind and magic it felt like the sudden kindling of a funeral pyre.

He had run down to his mother’s garden and flung himself onto one of the chill stone benches, burning with held-in tears, sick with rage, self-disgust, with the babies in his belly—because boys weren’t meant to have babies there, and he was a boy, mostly.

He wished his mother would come to him, speak wise and comforting words, stroke his hair, perhaps give him a draught to make his sickness feel better, because she was an excellent healer at all times.

Thor came instead, hours later, when it was nearly dark. “Greetings, brother!” he called out cheerfully. “I bested even Volstagg in the contests today. You smell like puke. Father is very angry. I missed you.”

Loki sat up, staring at his big, golden-haired, older brother, thinking how Thor did and did not resemble Baldr. Thor’s large, rough, sweaty hand closed suddenly around his arm.

“Whispers say our brother put a child in you,” Thor blurted out.

Loki glared down into his lap, and at Thor’s strong golden hand gripping his fragile white wrist. “Two children. Boys,” he added. He felt sick again. “Or so mother tells me.”

Thor cleared his throat, then squirmed a little, like a small child that needs to relieve itself. “I…Ah… I… Loki, he hurt you, didn’t he? Didn’t he?”

Loki raised his chin, granite-faced, neither confirmation nor denial in his eyes.

“Then I would like to cut his belly open with my worst battle-ax, the one I was foolish enough to loan to Volstagg last _Jul_ and that now won’t hold an edge, and I would stitch up a... uh... live young wild boar inside him and… and… drop him over the edge of the Bifrost! In a sack.”

Loki glanced up into his brother’s honest, outraged, ridiculous face. “That is… creative, Thor.”

“Would you like me to do it?” Thor asked. "I would. For you."

“I would never want you to be punished,” Loki shut his eyes, leaning into Thor’s warmth, his solidity. “You will always be my rock, older brother. I am sick in my heart and in my head, and I know not how I may become myself again. Be my rock here, Thor, not away in some prison of Odin’s devising.”

“You have always been the clever one, younger brother,” Thor answered, “And I will always love you best of all.”

_Freedom is an illusion._

 

The worlds are created, flourish, die in an endless circle, over and over and over again. Some things change, some stay the same, the circles continue endlessly.

It is comforting, really, or it can be. There is always that second, third, fourth chance—to infinity, if necessary.

But love is not an illusion, it is the axle, the spokes, the hub of the wheel. Not all love is good, but that which is…

That love is the torch in the nighttime in the heart of the terrible dark forest that stretches all around. That love is the fire that leaps up to save the life of the freezing man.

Loki took his children--Hela, Fenrir, Jӧrmungandr--from the hands of the kind blue Midgardian who reminded him of Sigyn. As he held them close, the cords of their lives twined around him, the color returned to his sight—not merely blue, but every color, some, even, that mortal vision could not have seen. After they had fed, Loki held them closer still, close as he possibly could to catch the feel, the sound, the smell of them: beautiful Hela, rough-smooth as a pearl, her skin full of secret lights, silver bells in her cries, a scent to her like lemons and ice; Fenrir with a scent sharp and green, like juniper, or the needles of firs, never still, rolling about with comical fierce cries, until the moment Loki took him again into his arms, and he relaxed entirely, sinking into his parent's affection.

Fenrir, existing, always, to love, and be loved.

Loki found it hard to release him and turn again to Jӧrmungandr—his brave Jӧri—difficult, but necessary.

"What is it?” Kurt said softly in Loki's ear. “Why… Is that fear he's feeling?”

Loki startled a little. He’d half forgotten the Midgardian was there.

“He had to hurt me, only a little, to come into this world. It was nothing,” Loki replied.

Jӧri smelled like desert sand, sweet spices and a small bit, still, like Loki’s own blood. His scales were slippery as fine satin and each small, perfect one had slightly its own form.

Weary, Loki lay down once again upon the shelf. Kurt arranged his dear ones upon his chest and covered them all with a sleeping cloth. The hardness of the shelf pained him to the marrow of his bones, and the room—his cell, Loki supposed—still felt far too warm, but the brightness of his children’s spirits sustained him, just as it had been during that terrible long blind time when they grew within him.

So beautiful, so perfect in every way, his small ones, however they were born, however cruel the intentions of those who brought them to be.

They were Loki’s now and his they would remain, if the Nine Realms had to burn for their protection.

For he had never, truly, been a god of mischief and lies as they said.

He was, ever, a god of fire.

* * *

“If you truly feel there’s an ongoing situation, _sir_ …” Steve was saying, somehow managing to look simultaneously helpful, cooperative and royally pissed off at the torpedoing of whatever his personal plans were for the day—because the word from Fury was, no one left the helicarrier until he gave the all clear.

“Steve had tickets to _Les Miz_ tonight.” Clint smirked. “His first time.”

Natasha smacked him on the back of the head—but only at “best-buddy-and-possibly-more” strength.

“I’m sorry to have disrupted your evening, Captain,” said Fury, in that bored, I-don’t-actually-care-anything-about-your-issues-because-I’m-a-BAMF-who-drives-a-helicarrier-and-I-can-do-whatever-I-want voice of his. He meglomaniacked on for another ten minutes or so, while Tony tried to defuse both his boredom and the sense of _something seriously hinky's going on here_ growing around him, by picturing Fury in his underwear. Only that image kept turning into one of the Director wearing nothing but his big leather coat and a riveted steel codpiece with missile firing capabilities—and that was even more terrifying.

When Tony tuned in again, Fury had given up the platform to Bruce, who went from, “I built the babies an incubator and they’re all snug and cozy” to a dissertation on their genetic makeup and blood chemistry that would have baffled a panel of Nobel Laureates in medicine. Knowing how much of his friend’s morning had actually been spent mingling with mutants and smuggling babies out of the Med Lab via Helpful Smurf, Tony had to wonder at the ratio of brilliance-to-bullshit Bruce was actually producing.

“Bottom line,” Fury snapped. “Are they his? Are they _Æsir_?”

“They’re his,” Bruce answered. “I think. But…”

“Loki is not _Æsir_.” Thor leaped to his feet, clutching Mjolnir to his chest like a kid clutching a teddy bear. “He is _Jӧtunn_. And may the _Nornir_ have cut short the golden thread of my life a thousand--nay, twice a thousand times!--ere I spoke such words as I have spoken over many years and stoked the fires of anger in my brother's proud heart.”

_Say what?_ Tony thought.

A little shiver of something seemed to go up Thor’s spine. His godly jaw dropped, and a second later the hammer fell to his side, dangling from its flimsy-looking strap around his wrist. He didn’t move closer to Fury, but he didn’t need to. “By all the gods..." he breathed. "By all the gods, I will be shown my brother or I will beat this foul airship from the sky!”

“Thor,” Fury said, in what passed for his "pleasant" voice. “No one’s gonna stop you, when the time comes.” His one eye narrowed. “No one’s gonna stop you.” He reached into the pocket of his big black coat and pulled out a sparkling green rod about the length of his hand. There was a puff of gray smoke, a soft flash of light, and Thor went down like a log, bleeding from every visible orifice.

“MotherFUCK!” Clint was on his feet, his chair halfway across the room he’d jumped up so fast.

“No worries, Agent Barton,” Fury said, then shot him too, with a blazing flash of purple. Clint caught the back of Natasha’s chair with his jaw going down, which was kind of fair payback for Loki and kind of stomach-turningly awful, all at the same time.

If Tony hadn’t been so horrified, the whole thing might have reminded him of the aliens in _Mars Attacks_ yelling “ _we come in peace_!” as they shot up the planet.

“Director, I…” Brave Bruce took a step forward, before Tony could stop him, obviously just meaning to check that Clint was okay—that jaw-crack had sounded kinda definitive--but Fury rapid-fire flashy-thinged him with (naturally) green, meaning no more help from either Bruce _or_ The Other Guy.

Bruce looked smaller lying there on the stained gray rug, and far too quiet, rumpled and sad, and with his big slumpy sweater and his glasses knocked clean off his face.

Tony couldn’t tell if Bruce was still breathing.  He could barely tell if he _himself_ was still breathing.

He started sing-songing a little internal mantra of _keepcalmkeepcalmdon’tloseitkeepcalm_  but, despite that, his stomach snarled up into instaknots and his heart, not to be left out, decided this must be a good time to start playing the rhythm tracks to fifty different songs, in conflicting genres. The rest of him just felt as if the whole ceiling would soon crumble down onto his head and bury him alive. Because, after all, what better time to jump into a full-on panic attack than when a big, scary dude has just (apparently) killed half your friends, and it looks like you might be next?

Tony had found it hard enough seeing The Mighty Thor flat-out on the floor, bleeding from his ears, mouth and his gods only knew where else. Likewise Clint Barton, sharp-shooting super-spy, who (if he lived), would probably be living on soup for the next month or so. To see his ScienceBro taken down, though--his good-hearted, decent, gentle Bruce who just wanted to help--that was too fucking much entirely.

Bruce couldn't be dead. He couldn't be. But Tony didn't know how to stop this, or fix anything about the situation. He simply didn't know what to do. Besides which, it hit him (as unhelpful thoughts popping up at inopportune moments often will) that they’d all been scanned, blood-tested and pee-cupped the minute they came up, thereby giving Director Asshat all the brand-spanking-new personal info he could possibly want to use for synching up his sparkly little secret weapon.

It didn’t take a genius, either, to notice that staffing on the helicarrier had actually dropped to below what could realistically be called a skeleton crew and, also, Tony knew none of them from Adam (the carsickness-inducing face-scrambler gear definitely helped with the not-knowing), but clearly missing even S.H.I.E.L.D. stalwarts like Agents Phil Coulson and Maria Hill.

_Also_ also, no one but Fury himself had made so much as a peep since the debriefing Tony had so conveniently slimed out of that morning. It was like being surrounded by faceless mimes. With big guns.

When it came to the subjects of S.H.I.E.L.D. and trust, Tony liked to maintain a few basic principles:  1) even if you _could_ throw Nick Fury, you still couldn’t trust him any distance at all, since he lied the way other people breathe; 2) you could probably trust Maria Hill exactly as far as you could throw her; and 3) you could most likely throw _and_ trust Phil Coulson a pretty good distance, considering he was both on the smaller side _and_ a decent enough guy—for a minion of S.H.I.E.L.D.

With Coulson and Hill missing and not accounted for...

Tony tried to swallow away the big, tight lump in his throat, but all his spit seemed to have dried up.  Maybe permanently.  This sure as hell wasn't how he wanted to go--flashy-thinged to death by Nick Fury on a near-deserted helicarrier.

Maybe he could catch Natasha's eye, though?  He'd catch her eye and they could swiftly work out a cunning plan using secret, coded eye signals, and then...

And then...

Thanks, big genius brain, for all your help with that one.

Natasha's eyes, at any rate, refused to be caught.

 

Tony actually found it heartwarming that she got flashed next.  Not because Nat went down, which was very much _not_ a good thing, but because Fury only just managed to catch her, in the air, as she soared toward him with the most kickass of all flying kicks and only missed the total rearrangement of his smug face (eyepatch included) by centimeters.

Nearly as impressive was what Natasha _hadn't_ done--namely, stood tall and proud by Fury's side, or even skedaddled to save her own skin. Tony mentally awarded her a Real Avenger shiny gold star, in the event they ever saw each other again.

Natasha looked small on the floor, too.  She looked discarded and broken and tiny, where usually she was all steel cables and high voltage and undiluted strength.

“Tony…” Steve said, through gritted teeth. “Try to make it out. I’ll do my best to shield you.”

_No pun intended_ , Tony thought. His chest ached, but that wasn’t with anything but sadness, because Steve didn’t have his shield. He didn’t have anything.

The light that got him was red, like blood, and the betrayal on Cap’s face, before he went down--even in profile--hurt nearly as much as Bruce’s fall.

“Yo! 'Scuse me!” Tony waved a hand. He felt like a giant bundle of loose live wires now, as if hundreds and hundreds of unmodulated volts had somehow begun to course through his body. “I think you fucking forgot somebody here in the back row!”

“You were ever an idiot, Stark,” Fury answered, which--even for a dude who'd said a lot of off-the-wall shit over the years-- struck Tony as a bit of an odd line-reading.

It sounded, frankly, like something that might have come out of Thor's mouth.

Fury regarded Tony sourly for a moment then, sighing, reached up.

He pulled the eyepatch off his face.

His.

Fucking.

Eyepatch.

Behind it lay an equally fucking totally healthy eye.

“But perhaps a clever idiot..."  Fury went on, in a voice that sounded increasingly less Furyesque.  "I present to you this one chance: swear fealty to me…”

Some major rippling action took place.  Suddenly, instead of a big, angry African-American man in a black leather coat, an even bigger, even angrier blonde guy in black leather armor stood glaring down at him.

Angry, yup--but crazy, too, and in a serious way. If Loki (on Bruce's scale) rated "bag-of-cats" crazy, this guy’s sack appeared had been jammed chock full of tigers and mountain lions.

Tony felt sick.  Confused and sick.  He wanted to crawl away to some nice, small, safe place and build something.  He wanted all his friends, all his teammates, to suddenly jump up again and yell, "April Fools!" at the top of their lungs.  He wanted Fury to put his Fury-face back on and just be normal Fury-level scary, and for them all to happily go out for Chinese.

Instead, being himself, he wisecracked, “Hey, anyone ever tell ya you look just like Rutger Hauer in _Ladyhawke_? Sucks about that whole wolf by night, hawk by day thing…”

Tony would willingly admit that, as smartass comments went, it wasn't up to his usual standard. He was simply too shaken. At least he tried, though. At least it was defiance, of a sort.

He stalked toward the stranger, so angry and so monumentally terrified he really _couldn't_ breathe.  He certainly couldn't think. He wanted to murder this bastard.

_Murder_ him.

Slowly and inventively murder him.

He wanted to run away and hide.

God, if he only had a suit! Why had he ever taken off his suit?

Bruce, Thor, Cap, Clint, Nat—Tony kept trying to sneak glimpses from the corners of his eyes, hoping to see them moving, hoping to see a breath, a twitch, even, all thanks to this oversized SpaceViking motherfucker.

_Please_ , he thought, not even sure what he was asking, or who he was asking it from. "Please."

No answer came to him, no last moment reprieve. Instead, the big guy raised his hand, pointing the sparkly tube (which, put that way, didn't seem all that threatening, only Tony had seen what the damn thing could do).  The tube began to leak light, spitting off sparks of a goldeny-yellow color.

Tony froze, one hand flung out like he was about to go full-on Diana Ross and break into a lively a cappella rendition of _"Stop In the Name of Love."_

That particular hand, he realized--apropos of nothing--was the one Loki’s blood had touched. There, spread across his palm, and itching slightly (or possibly tingling), was a pattern that resembled a snowflake made of pitchforks and Old School TV antennas, drawn with perfect precision in green ink.

Tony had to laugh; he just couldn’t help it. The god of mischief, however broken, wouldn't have put it there (Tony devoutly hoped) just for shits and giggles. _Damn it, Loki,_ he thought, _You sneaky bastard!_

The giant SpaceViking's two, totally intact, glittery blue eyes narrowed. He had a clear family resemblance to Thor that Loki had totally missed out on—the whole adoption thing, obviously--paler skin, paler hair, bigger, but still Thor. Tony would have given a lot just then for access to J.A.R.V.I.S. and his Ye Olde Compendium of Norse Lore for a moment or two of insight into the Odin Family Tree, and a guess at who this guy might actually be.

Blondie pointed the flashy rod again, tension in every muscle of his astoundingly muscular arm. “Will it be fealty, or nay, Son of Stark?”

“Uh, sorry, I think I’ll pass.” Tony grinned, feigning an indifference that bordered on boredom. “See, I gave up fealty for Lent this year.”

The tube flashed (yellow) and smoked (dull aqua).  The design on Tony’s palm gave a happy little glimmer.  Otherwise, _nada_.

“Uh, oops?" Tony waved his hand again,slowly, to show off his special snowflake.  "I think you may have miscalibrated there, sport. Want a second try?  Want me to take a look?"

Big Blondie's lips pulled back from his teeth--of which there seemed to be too many, all of them showing a shocking disregard for dental hygiene.  Up until that minute he'd looked normal(ish), bag-of-big-cats crazies aside, in his Nordic (Giant-sized) Rutger-Hauer-meets-Thor kind of way, but his expression, once he really caught sight of Tony’s hand, was like...

Tony gulped.  To him (his hand burning now, and his heart still beating so hard his chest ached), it seemed as if some extra layer of skin had rolled away, a layer that normally hid something no one should ever have to see.  Not ever.

With that layer gone, the yuck that lurked beneath showed way, way too clearly, and it was truly awful, in both senses of the word, an obscene mixture of rabid wolf, diseased and fly-blown bear, and worst, worst of all, a man—or something like a man--rotted, depraved, sick and evil right down to the roots of his soul.

Tony had come across some bad dudes in his time.  He'd fought them, and most times he'd handed them their asses, thank you very much.  But this...

Tony found himself stumbling backward, unable to look one second longer.  Finally, he flat-out tripped, but instead of losing his footing on the crappy government-issue carpet and falling on his ass the way he expected, a blank white wall rose up and smacked him, maximum velocity, from behind.

He spent a full five seconds knowing exactly how Wile E. Coyote felt at the end of any given failed scheme, thinking, _Well, that part didn’t turn out so well_ , before the beep-beeping Roadrunners stopped circling around inside his head.

Out went the lights.


	3. The Saga of the Brothers Lokison and Their Brave and Clever Sister Hela

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A discovery about his furry blue companion causes Loki to teeter on the brink of a dubious moral choice. Fortunately for him, the part of Jiminy Cricket, Conscience, is ably played by the Lokikids Three.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The non-con warning applies once more, though again nothing graphic. Also, again,this is somewhat angstoriffic.
> 
> Apparently my Muse (and Hela) believe that Tony Stark will appear if you call him three times, like Beetlejuice or Chrestomanci. And why not? She also has certain opinions about the Warriors Three.
> 
> This chapter has been brought to you by the letter eth (ð), less popular younger brother (rather like poor Loki) of the letter thorn (Ϸ), also known as the “th” sound we find in “thought” rather than  
> the “th” we find in “them.” Children of the world, be thankful indeed that _I_ don’t run Sesame Street!
> 
> _dreki_ =dragon (Icelandic)  
>  _Drache_ =dragon (German)

* * *

Born too soon and scarcely over a Midgardian day in age, Jӧri, his precocious one, had already learned the ways of shape-shifting.  From time to time he'd be a tiny boy with shining silver hair and jewel-bright green eyes, his skin pale as Loki's skin was pale.  Just now he bore his first shape, and coiled in the form of a very small _dreki_ round Loki’s throat, lace–fine wings furled against scaled sides, tail (neatly tipped with an indigo spade-shaped point, for by all appearances, Jӧri admired the Midgardian, Kurt’s, long, whip-like tail excessively) wound over his head, concealing the position of his small, hungry mouth, his long hollow teeth plunged deep into the left carotid artery, his body flushing continually with fresh, new blood, veiled by Loki’s long hair.

Better that Kurt not see such feeding. What if he did not understand that there were no monsters here, only differing needs, that Jӧri had to be what he was, not a dragon in truth but a creature of blood and magic, rather than one of milk and magic like his brother and sister?

A ripple of anger passed through him.  _How_ , Loki wondered, _Can I be so weakened in my spirit that the thought of what_ _a blue Midgardian might think--or not think--should trouble me for so much as an instant in time?_

Loki could answer that particular question easily enough for himself _: because I am not a god, if ever, in fact, I might have been one.  Now I am only a filthy, broken, and worthless thing, and the gods mock me._

In a vague attempt to make himself feel better, Loki spun out a bit of simple Craft, finally converting the filthy, repugnant garment he’d been forced to wear for he-knew-not-how-long into more fitting attire, a simple tunic and breeches.  Afterwards he stretched out on the sleeping-cloths Kurt had laid across the metal bench to cushion its hardness. The cloths scratched like horsehair and smelled vaguely of mildew, but they were preferable to feeling his bones ache every moment of every hour.

Despite being clean, he did not feel better.  He felt worse, so much worse he wanted to weep, but he did not.

Instead, Loki forced himself to take long, slow breaths, hating the way he shivered in the stiflingly hot room, the way icy sweat broke out on his brow and upper lip, his stomach turning over and over and over.

_How can I be so destroyed?_ he wondered in dismay.  _After such a child’s working? It was_  
_nothing. It was nothing._

It could not have been the needs of his children; his flesh ought to have contained substance enough to nourish them through a year’s turning.  And yet...

Kurt glanced up sharply, as if sensing Loki’s distress. He worried, Hela reported, particularly about a young woman who walked on air, one he cared for as a sister, whom he’d sent away from the airship in great haste. He worried about the rising heat and the turning of the secret ways he’d been following when he left the cell for supplies. He worried about the silence everywhere,  
except for the rancid throb of magic around them, the absence of even their blur-faced jailers—all with the knife-sharp instincts of a wild creature that has been trapped and fought his way to freedom a thousand times.

Kurt tended now to Stark, who had with great suddenness appeared at the transparent front wall, then flown with stunning force to strike the back of the cell. The unarmored Man of Iron lay senseless on a separate pile of the sour sleeping-cloths as Kurt felt down his limbs with gentle care, touching the bones of Stark’s spine and the planes of his skull tenderly with his oddly-formed hands.

Kurt had said he was not a Healer, not a Doctor as these Midgardians termed it, merely a medic, which Loki took to mean some sort of Healers’ menial assistant, such as those charged with staunching the wounds of the injured, or dragging in them from the field of battle. Yet the Midgardian clearly possessed the Healer’s Gift, more strongly, even, than many Loki had known in Asgard.

Why was Kurt not a Healer among his kind? He seemed of the right age, and clever enough for the work. Were blue Midgardians considered of a lower caste, and as such not allowed within the Halls of Learning? Could his hands not manipulate the Midgardian instruments of healing?

Under cover of his tunic, Loki shifted his hand into two thick fingers and a thumb, flexing the digits thoughtfully. How strange it would be, how difficult, to write, to eat, use a knife or a tool—yet the Midgardian seemed to manage every act so gracefully.

Swiftly, as Kurt straightened, Loki shifted back again. The tiny effort left him gasping.

“This damned heat!” Kurt stretched, rising to the very tips of his toes, his spine arched like the backward-bending branch atop the letter eth. Loki found it wondrous the way Kurt could bend, twist, reach, almost as if he had no bones at all. He liked listening to Kurt, the little ripples that took place in his own Allspeak-hearing when the Midgardian made one of his swift changes between the tongue called German, the language of his private thoughts, and the English tongue he used for communication with the American Midgardians.

Loki spoke the English language well enough, and the German tongue too, without relying upon the crutch of the Allspeak, and yet...

And yet he felt so tired, so terribly tired.

“You remind me of a _fjallið köttur_ ,” Loki told him, careful to let none of this show.  He must not appear weak amongst Midgardians, who had reason enough to hate him..

Kurt repeated the words after him, as if tasting their sounds. “What is that, Loki? A cat?” He frowned slightly. “A fjӧrd cat? That makes no sense.” Kurt laughed merrily at his own lack of understanding. “I’m completely guessing! Cats aren’t fond of water and neither am I. It takes forever to get the wet out of my fur.

"Speaking of which, do you mind…?” He gestured, indicating his handsome red-and-black uniform. “I’m decent underneath, and this thing is generally comfortable, it’s just…” He began to unseal the uniform.

“The _verdammt_ heat,” Loki put in, proud of himself that he’d said the German word exactly right, just as Kurt said it. “A _fjallið köttur_ is a mountain cat. They are small, black mostly, with a bit of red, like your uniform.”

Kurt perched on the edge of the shelf, the end of his tail, unminded, falling across Loki’s thigh, where Fenrir, who had been napping there, seized the spade-shaped tip, worrying the edges with his milk teeth and wrestling it. Kurt pulled off the lower part of the uniform in one quick wriggle, clad now only in thin, tight leggings not so different from those Loki wore.

“Such fierce creatures,” Loki continued, watching Kurt lift his uniform from the floor, give it a small shake, then root for something within the breast. “Sharp of tooth, strong for their size, sleek…”

Kurt had found the thing he was looking for, a small token, small enough to be contained in his hand, round and silvery. Kurt brought the token to his lips, his eyes closing briefly.

“Loyal. Beautiful,” Loki breathed, and a soft rush of sadness and something like disappointment flowed through him. _Fool_ , his inner voice hissed, mocked. _Are you a blushing maiden of no experience that you create fondness in yourself for a deformed monster of a Midgardian whom you’ve known for no more than a heartbeat? Why, because he cleaned the puke off you when you lay in your own filth? Because he cleans the arses of your misshapen get? Can such ungodly weakness be caused by his_ _kindness to you? You are as much a mewling quim as the ginger-headed murderess._

A species of weary rage rolled through him and with it, again, the sorrow—the anger not directed at Kurt, never at Kurt, but at his own despicable, disobedient, irrational self—he felt as if might at any moment weakly drift apart into more pieces than there were stars in the heavens over Yggdrasil.

“Ah, no.  Ah, gods, no.” he breathed, though he tried not to allow the words any sound.  Jӧri detached from his body, fine wings carrying him into the air overhead with a crisp snap. Fenrir whined, snapping at the sleeping-cloths, at Kurt’s tail, at anything within reach of his small jaws. Hela chimed in a cacophony of silver.

“Loki, you must be calm,” Kurt was saying, painfully gentle, painfully calm. “Loki, the children are afraid. You must be still for them. There’s something here, either magic or madness. You’re not strong enough yet to sustain this anger.”

The Midgardian gathered him up and held him tightly, arms wrapped crossways round Loki’s body, so tightly perhaps that it ought to have bruised him. His own hands gripped Kurt’s powerful forearm with equal pressure—until he noticed that virtually no contrast existed between his fingers and Kurt’s cloud-soft fur. Blue melted into blue.

The cries of his children had ceased. Only the whisper of Jӧri’s wings remained, and a soft crackling sound. The heat pounded down upon Loki from every side, as if a thousand Thors pounded him with a thousand Mjolnirs.

He had no concern for himself. Overwhelmed with horror, he tore himself away, terrified at what destruction his frigid _Jӧtunn_ flesh might have wrought upon the tender flesh of a human man. He stared at his betrayer hands, forcing the blue away in painful small increments, until fingers, palms, everything were his own again.

"Like moonlight and starlight."  Was that not what Thor had said, many, many years before?

Many years before, when his brother loved him.

“You didn’t hurt me, Loki,” Kurt said. If anything Kurt sounded kinder than usual, but perhaps that was pity.

Loki could not meet his eyes, though Kurt's eyes were lovely, deeper than deep and full of light. In no part of himself could he bear for Kurt to pity him.

"Loki, do you understand the difference between empathy and pity?” Kurt asked.

Loki drew a warding rune on the unpleasant sleeping-cloth.

“Don’t you draw protection signs against me, young man.” Kurt laughed with good humor, mimicking the stern tones of an elder, and Loki scowled at him, even though scowling hurt his face. “Loki, _mein Freund_ , I was raised by a sorceress. My foster-sister is a sorceress. My…” Something happened, and for only an instant Kurt’s face was not his own--merry, kind, strangely pleasing. It became sadder, haunted, like gazing into a looking-glass that will show only the face of one's regrets, the heart of hearts that holds that which you would undo, gods, please, yes, a hundred times undo, if only, if only…

“I have known others,” Kurt finished. “From different traditions, of course, but they’re not really as different as you all like to think they are. I recognize the signs.”

“You have not recognized the signs from others’ workings, Kurt, you possess latent talent.” Loki touched Kurt’s arm again, wondering how in the Nine Realms he could have missed it—the swirl of something like a desert whirlwind, something like a burst of fire out of _Muspelheimr_. “You hear my children’s songs, you know truth from lies, you…”

Kurt shifted. Loki thought he meant to pull away, but instead Kurt’s hand covered his own, squeezing slightly.

He had hurt Kurt after all, Loki saw, burned off his beautiful fur right down to the indigo skin below, leaving the skin itself cracked and weeping. “Loki, you’re becoming very excited, and you’re not well.”

“Now you mock me.” Loki tried to keep the bitterness from his voice, but failed miserably.

“I would never mock you, Loki—or, yes, I would, but only if it was something we both found funny, Never to hurt or humiliate you. Jӧri, love, come down now. And if you’re going to feed, go to the right. The left is getting sore and needs to heal a little. There. There. _Du bist ein schöner Drache_.”

Loki swayed from even his son’s slight weight, from the brush of wings against his skin _. Yes, you are a beautiful dragon, Jӧri,_ Loki thought, _And how I wish that I had been born a beautiful monster too._

Kurt’s fingers slid gently across Loki's neck, helping the little one to settle. Unable to stop himself, Loki bent his cheek into the cup of Kurt’s palm, wanting the warmth of it even in that hot, hot room, relishing the press of Kurt’s hard wrist against his aching jaw, even though the touch made him moan a little.

He had been alone such a terrible long time in his blindness.

After a moment Kurt stirred, tapping Loki’s hip lightly. “Scoot, _ja_?”

“What is ‘scoot?’ I do not understand your Midgardian vernacular.”

Kurt laughed. “You are an extremely silly _Gott des Unfugs_ , and I imagine you understand me perfectly well, since you are reading my mind—though in a very lackadaisical manner. Again, I say, scoot, please.”

“' _Unfugs'_   is an ugly word.” Loki slid forward a few inches, enough that Kurt could ease in behind him. “I prefer mischief.”

Kurt’s chest was much nicer to lie against than the hard, hot metal of the wall, and Kurt’s soft fur,strangely, made Loki feel cooler rather than warmer. Fenrir continued to gnaw happily on Kurt’s tail—developing, Loki was sure, a fine, sharp set of teeth. Hela wanted to eat, the sharpness of her need a glass-bladed knife in his mind.

But there she was, already cradled against his chest, lying on the soft inside of Kurt’s forearm, where Loki had burned him with the hateful frost. Loki touched his thumb to his daughter’s chest, against the lovely throb of her heart, uncurling his long fingers downward, to brush against Kurt’s skin.

“Ah! Caught in the act!” the Midgardian murmured in his ear. “You may not try to heal me, Loki. You’re far too weak, and I’ll heal perfectly well on my own. Feed your daughter.” Kurt held him a little closer, stroking Loki’s hair to show he wasn’t angry. It ought to have caused him great humiliation—was he a child or a lapdog to be petted so?—but instead it felt like a long-wished-for  
homecoming, after years in the Barren Lands.

Kurt used humor not as a weapon, Loki realized, but in the manner of a sworn Shield-Brother, as a kindness meant to allow him to save face. What could be more ordinary than two Shield-Brothers jesting? Thor had always had his Shield-Brothers (and Sister), loyal to him through every Realm.

_Graceful as ever, Loki? If you hurt him, I will kill you., Loki. I will kill you. I will kill you. I_ _WILL kill you, Loki._

Warriors who had seen him grow to manhood, or grown alongside him, yet held him in scorn.

The crone who had procured that fell serpent at Odin’s bidding had, in the end, lacked the height to affix its writhing body to the irregular stone bowl of the cavern's roof. It had been Volstagg, noisy buffoon Volstagg, with his great height, who’d accomplished the deed. Loki recalled the boom of his laughter from the cavern walls, the splatter of his spilled mead, a sticky, sickly honey-sweet scent that lasted out the turn of the year.

He remembered Sigyn, his sweet brown _Vanir_ -mouse who ought to have been his bride, her shrill, small voice rising through the echo-heavy dark. “Warriors, you call yourselves? Cowards, I say! Slayers of children! Betrayers of a Shield-Brother! How many times has Loki delivered you from the weight of your own stupidity when he might have left you to wriggle like salmon in the net?”

“What do you know of anything?” Fandral had sneered, “You’re not even _Æs_.”

And Hogun, of the _Vanir_ himself, had kept his silence, even as Fandral cast his kinswoman aside, her slight form sliding across the loose gravel of the cavern floor.

The great stone rolled to, blocking the cavern-mouth, blocking out day.

Mortal-turned and venom-sickened, how long could Sigyn have lasted there in the darkness? Fairest beings of the Nine Realms, the Vanir were not made for the coldness at the bowels of the earth, or for suffering, or pain.

Inside Loki’s head, Hela sang a song to him about Thor asleep upon a gray carpet, which made Loki strangely sad. She sang a song about Ten Rings which were not rings at all, but some wicked thing in the desert. She sang a song about a terrible great immortal bear with claws that would sunder anything. Hela’s songs were very beautiful but very strange. They made Loki’s head pound.

Kurt laughed softly and a little sleepily. “Your daughter just sang a song about Logan, the man I love. The bear song.”

Loki thought of the brutish creature’s glinting terrible claws, and of the betrothal ring shuffled somewhere within the sleeping-cloths. The silver-glinting ring Kurt had kissed, forged from that same metal that composed those dire claws.

“It’s called adamantium,” Kurt said. “It can’t be broken.”

He nestled Hela in Loki’s lap and Loki rested his palm against her fair, bare skin. Of all his children she needed the touch of him most, the perfect closeness to his magic. He nearly smiled watched Kurt reel in his tail, hauling Fenrir along with it, the little one squealing with delight at his impromptu ride. He squealed again, in a different tone, voicing his desire to be cuddled in his now-familiar spot against Loki’s chest, guzzling the rich, warm milk.

“Drink up, my small warrior!” Loki told him, “ _Pabbi_ will be thankful to breathe again.”

Kurt gave a little shudder, then boosted Fenrir slightly—he tended to get overexcited during his feedings and launch himself downward, despite steadying hands. “I suppose I had known… The… ah… equipment… is on the inside, _ja_ , under your ribs? That must be awful when the milk glands are full, and I’ve seen how much _die Kinder_ drink. How is there room for your lungs?”

“It is not a Midsummer Festival,” Loki agreed, forcing his voice to lightness, though he had first meant to say, _I am a mismade and misbegotten thing._ “Your Anthony Stark would no doubt call it a 'critical design flaw.'”

_A mistake_ , the voice clamored on inside his head. _You are now and ever a mistake_.

Loki smiled, though, as Fenrir dropped into his lap beside his more delicate sister, sated and sleeping once again. “There you are, my joyous small glutton. Perhaps I should make Volstagg your Shield-Father.” He took a few cautious breaths, glad at last to have room for his lungs to work even a little.

“Loki," Kurt said, "You’re going to need to let your glamours down when I bring Dr. Banner to you. I don’t know what strange thing is happening, what's possessed this place, but I will find a way. You can’t go on like this. I don’t know that much about _Jӧtnar_ physiology, just enough to know the heat alone in this _verdammt_ cell could probably kill you. There’s nothing to eat. There’s water,  
but you’re not drinking enough…”

“I drink everything you give me.” Loki reached out for the ugly blue cup Kurt had left at the end of the shelf, taking three quick, tiny sips, one for each of his children. His body reacted immediately, terribly. It refused to let anything in, utterly refused it, there was blood in his throat again, in his mouth, and all the inside of him burning, and since he had no physical resources to bring to the battle, he called on the tatters of his _seiðr_ , only to watch those threadbare streamers go up in flames around him.

Kurt caught hold of him, tail wrapping twice, with a hard snap, around Loki's waist. Kurt’s hands curved powerfully over the sides of his head. Loki had known Kurt was strong for a Midgardian, but not how strong. Kurt might well have been able to hurt him, even in the bloom of his strength. In his current state Kurt could speed his end with the ease of a thought, had he desired.

“Loki, relax, I have no idea what I’m doing,” Kurt hissed, as blood bubbled out between his lips. “Please don’t fight me.”

Loki tried to hold still as the thing Kurt attempted to send into him seethed over, around, through him. He had thought he knew nearly everything that could be known of the ways of magic, innate or learned, but this strange whirlwind desert Craft confounded him utterly. It cut into him in gusts and flurries, but they were not the gusts and flurries of the snows, unthinkingly understood by his _Jӧtunn_ flesh. Nonetheless, he began to feel stronger. This brutal magic did not heal—that was not its power—but it destroyed brilliantly. And the thing Kurt pointed it at, as best he was able, was the terrible growing thing, dark mirror of his marvelous children, that had been planted inside him, meant to spread and consume his flesh, leaving his small ones, his beautiful,  
bright, beloved ones alone in the Nine Realms.

Loki remembered, then, the faceless servants, half magical/half machine. He remembered the metal suit of unmovable armor that held him, legs spread, arms stretched out from his shoulders and slightly back, forever standing month after month after weary month. He remembered the mask set over his eyes, full of a painful light, his lids held open so that his captors could steal from him  
Craft, emotion, knowledge, thought, memory, until his own uncalled for tears, trapped within the mask, became duplicates of the serpent’s venom, scalding his skin.

He remembered the muzzle, drilled into the bones of his face, his mouth held always in a soundless scream, a way to force in the evil draughts that thrust him to fertility and kept him in that state, to force his ova to accept the invading seed, to implant and hold the ova despite the deprivations of his body, the nutriments to keep him balanced on the edge of life, to keep the children growing in his belly.

And then, naturally, the dark seed set to steal his life away, the moment his beloveds came out of him. He must not forget, either, the other creation—the _vendi_ or “wand,” he supposed its engineer would call it, though it was nothing at all like the slender ceremonial _vendi_ of some _Vanir_ workings, live-culled from the branches of blessed trees.

So his children had grown in him, from nothing at first, to the merest sense of their presence, to the slightest murmurings in the dark, to the first awkward, tentative notes of their songs, to their joyous, constant chorus within him.

Loki remembered, too briefly, that not everything he made was evil.

He wasn’t only the father of lies.

He thought of the identity of his children’s other parent, of the part of the _vendi_ crafted from magic. The other part--the bits made of metal, wood, stone--could wait. The engineer could wait. He would have his time.

Family was more important.

“Baldr the Beautiful,” Loki said, his face calm and still, almost thoughtful. “Baldr the Fair.”

Anyone who truly knew him would have found the expression terrifying.

But no one truly knew him, did they? And never had done. Never.

Jӧri detached from around his throat, shifting to Loki’s shoulder. The delicate webs of his wing brushed Loki’s cheek.

“Except for you, of course, my loves," he told his children, "Except for you.”

Kurt lay face down now on the gray sleeping-cloth, a circle of darkness around his head, a purplish stain on the fabric. All the life seemed to have gone out of his magnificent tail. Fenrir nosed at it sadly, with many soft whimpers.

“He will be well. I feel his magic.” Loki thought of the word Kurt had not said, and of the reasons Kurt had not said it, the word that explained much of what Kurt was, and all he denied. _Neyaphem_ : too bitter and cruel a word to take shape within Kurt’s smiling fanged mouth.

Loki combed his fingers through Kurt’s soft, curling hair, arranging it into peaks and whorls. If he had asked Kurt to explain in clear words the source of the great desert cloud of magic that hung around him continually, Kurt might have said, “My father is a king of the _Neyaphem_ , an ancient race of demonlike mutants who once ruled the southern parts of this planet, now banished to another dimension. That’s the dimension I travel through when I ‘port—just in and out again.”

With his forefinger, Loki drew a protection rune in the downy fur of Kurt’s back, knowing it would be gone the moment Kurt moved. So soft it was! How was it possible for anything to be so soft?

Fenrir scaled the tail, uncurling from his usual ball to sit defiantly upright atop Kurt’s arse, looking for all the world like a small, angry hedgehog, with the stiff, spiky hair atop his head and down his spine. He’d begun to shift shape now as well, his delicate features changing from _ùlfir_ to _Æsir_ and back again.

Loki drew a blessing rune on Fenrir’s velvet-furred tummy. “Just for you, precious one, because you are my blessing.”

But Fenrir only sat in place, rocked, cried.

Jӧri brushed Loki’s cheek again and sang to him a query so complex, so deep and tightly woven with _seiðr_ that Loki felt he had to keep running and running after the meaning of that song, but could never catch hold of all that lay within it.

Hela sang a single long clear note, rising and rising.

_We might have been sworn Shield-Brothers_ , Kurt, Loki thought, with something close to desperation. He felt as if _Gungnir_ , Spear of Odin, had been driven in through the walls of his chest, in through the cold, echoing, empty chambers of his heart.

_We might have been friends_ , added a voice, that was Kurt’s voice exactly.

“He is a prince of the _Neyaphem_ ,” Loki cried, “And does not even realize! He believes puissant beings to be puling weak mutants, their great Craft to be mere misunderstood science and mutant tricks, but it is mightier than oceans or deserts or Realms. He believes it is only his sire’s power, yet he owns it entire. If he will not claim that which is there for the claiming, then we will wrest it  
from him, my children—and make it, and the unwitting prince, the instruments of our vengeance!”

"For you, my loves," he added.  "Only for you."

Fenrir abruptly curled into a ball in the small of Kurt’s back. With a flick of his wings Jӧri flung himself into the air, hanging in the remotest corner of the cell with his blue-tipped tail switching madly.

Loki pressed both hands over his mouth, not certain if he meant to be sick or to push the dreadful words back forcefully into himself. But words, once out of their box, could never be put back again. And there was no hope for him.

“I would never hurt him,” Loki choked out through the muzzle of his spasming fingers. “I would never hurt Kurt. I would never. I would never.”

In his lap, Hela, loveliest Hela, his radiant girl of living pearl, performed her first shift. Her graceful limbs went limp, her radiance faded first to gray, the flesh loosening over her bones, darkening further still in splotches of horrid black, of sick, decayed blue.

_I would rather be dead_ , she meant to tell him. _I would rather be dead_.

In near madness, Loki flung himself away, all the way to corner of the cell opposite to the place of Jӧri’s hovering.

Jӧrmungandr keened now, calling out to his sister, _Too far, fairest, too far, too far. He we love is too sadly broken for such harshness._

Hela shifted again to her usual form, though Loki never saw the change. His hands pressed over his eyes, over his mouth…

The muzzle. The mask.

Shut away speech. Shut away sight.

His ragged nails clawed his scalp, tearing skin..

The words can never go back in the box. They never will.

_Hela_ , Fenrir cried, _You broke_ Pabbi _. Fix him now?_

_I can’t_ , Hela answered, shivering with fear. _I can’t, my brothers, I don’t know how._

_Man of Iron with no iron suit?_ Jӧri suggested. He dropped lower in the air, very low in fact, though it made him rather nervous to be so close to a Midgardian who wasn’t Kurt. Kurt was, of course, a _Mikill Hjarta_ , a Great Heart, a hero, and they all knew they need never fear him. Man of Iron was an unknown quantity, and he stank of the machines _Pabbi_ feared so terribly.

He and Hela needed to act, quickly. Fenrir was becoming frightened, and if he became too frightened he might make himself BIG to frighten the fear away, like the great green BruceHulk who lived in a dark cave inside Man of Iron’s dreams.

Jӧri and Hela had taken turns all the time they lived in the Darkwarm Hall, watching over Fenrir one by one, so that he would not become frightened and BIG inside the Hall. They very nearly lost the battle during the Falling Time. Jӧri had needed to be braver than he was actually able to be, knowing he must hurt _Pabbi_ so terribly, and he’d sacrificed his beautiful First Teeth to open the Way of Light to _Sauðfé_ Meadow (which was not an inspiringly heroic name for a location in _The Saga of the Brothers Lokison and Their_  
 _Strong and Clever Sister Hela_ , as heroic names generally do not have the word “sheep” in them, but he supposed Man of Iron could be trusted to know names in his own city).

_Stop composing sagas in your head_ , Jӧri Lokison, Fenrir told him, _And bite Man of Iron. I find_ _myself uncomfortably close to BIGness_. He scurried all the way up Kurt’s sleeping body to burrow into the space between Kurt’s neck and shoulder, tucking his wolf nose behind Kurt’s pointed ear, the place they all agreed smelled Most Like Kurt.

Jӧri bit Man of Iron hard as he could with his Second Teeth, but they must not have been very good yet, because Man of Iron only grunted angrily and flapped his arm around a bit, as if swatting flies, which was just insulting. He flitted over to _Pabbi_ , stroking him softly with his wings, singing to him in his gentlest voice, _Jӧri loves you, your own Jӧri loves you, we know you_ _didn’t mean to speak the_ Hrӕðileg Orð _, the Terrible Words_ —but _Pabbi’s_ mind was full of the dark, barren, frigid, windswept place, which was a real place, the Land of the Ancestors, and something else besides, something with an extra mountain of meaning inside _Pabbi’s_ head and heart, that Jӧri had not yet the experience to decipher.

_Hela, if you are to be a_ Valkyrja _, you ought to start practicing,_ Jӧri told her.

_I’m two days old_ , she snapped. _What do you want from me?_

Still, she drew in breath (and surely she must have owned some pocket universe somewhere outside her infant body merely to keep her extra breath in) for her silver-clear voice rose and rose and rose and ROSE until it filled the whole of the cell full, then filled it to overflowing. Her clarion _Valkyrja_ voice, that could not be unheard or denied.

_Pabbi_ recoiled from it, curling into an impossibly small ball for a being of his height, hands clapped over his ears in a vain attempt to shut out the sound.

Kurt jerked upright, unwittingly bouncing Fenrir into the air, though he caught him easily within the moment. Fenrir laughed, snuggling into Kurt’s fur, all thoughts of becoming BIG entirely vanished.

And Hela worked words, twined with her own potent _seiðr_ , into her world-filling cry, “Tony Stark, Tony Stark, Tony Stark, the Children of Loki need you!


	4. Slide-slipping Leftwards Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tony gets schooled by a younger woman, Kurt gets cranky in Romanian and Loki is less than glamorous. Also, Tony and Kurt both think of a European destination they'd rather not visit (and realize that, yes indeed, that's exactly where they're headed).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kurt isn't actually saying anything awful to Tony, he's just asking (in Romanian) to be given a moment (and Tony has just yanked on his own personal tail, after all). When Tony continues to annoy him, he's told to go to hell (actually, to the devil). My purely BS reason for Kurt snapping in Romanian rather than in a Romany dialect is as follows: a) Latin is the #1 language of magic (and rightly so!); b) Romanian is the "other" Romance language and, as such, closely related to Latin; 3) Kurt's foster mother Margali and her two kids, creepy Stefan and mildly-sketchy Jimaine were all magic users--they probably had magic around their house the way other families have peanut butter (in my dark, dark head-cannon the three of them were feeding vampirically off Kurt's natural magic throughout his entire childhood, an idea I may someday explore further); d) Romanian is a really cool language, one of my top 5; e) Good luck finding Romany on Google Translate or any other 
> 
> Banshee and _Bean Sidhe_ sound pretty much the same. It's just that Hela has inherited the supercilious gene from Loki. Please forgive her (and me).
> 
> CGI=computer-generated imagery, aka special visual effects created via computer software.
> 
> Tony's "potato potahto" comes from the 1924 George Gershwin song, " _Let's Call the Whole Thing Off."_ The applicable snippet of lyric goes:
> 
>  
> 
> _You like potato and I like potahto_  
>  _You like tomato and I like tomahto_  
>  _Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto_  
>  _Let's call the whole thing off_
> 
>  
> 
> The Beatles song _"Octopus's Garden"_ , from their 1969 album _Abbey Road_ , was written and sung by Richard Starkey (better known as Ringo Starr).
> 
> The actual quote is: " _Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall._ (Proverbs 16:18 King James Version)
> 
> Tony's right, the " _What's Hecuba to him..."_ quote is from Shakespeare--from _Hamlet_ , Act 2, scene 2, in fact.

* * *

Tony found himself on his feet, doing the kind of drunkard’s waltz he hadn’t done since the days his best friend came in a shiny, shiny bottle and went by the name of Mr. Glenmorangie.

To an outsider (i.e., anyone outside his head-exploding-migraine-having, jet-lagged, hungover, vertigo-experiencing, nauseated self) it probably looked pretty comical. Tonight’s entertainment by Tony the Dancing Bear! To an insider (namely, Tony himself) it felt like absolute shit.

Fortunately, enough of his engineer instincts remained that he was able to note a place in the back wall where the metal panels came together in a slightly different pattern, indicating the presence (he hoped) of a door, which _might_ mean either a bathroom or, possibly, a closet. If the latter, he was screwed--but then why would a cell have a walk-in closet anyway? To keep those stylin’ orange prison jumpsuits fresh and tidy?

Equally fortunately for him, though, it _was_ a bathroom.  The door slid open at his touch and Tony was able to kind of fall in and collapse on his knees in front of the toilet. During the process of revisiting everything he’d eaten in the past seventeen years, he became aware, over the nasty sounds he himself was making, that something in the outer room had begun to produce a eardrum-shredding, soul-destroying, skull-splitting Banshee wail. As in the actual wail an actual Banshee would actually make, provided there were actual Banshees—which in Tony's recently adjusted world-view, he would not have been willing to bet against.

“Aww, shit,” Tony groaned, and reached up, shaky-handed, to flush the toilet. “Shit. Fuck. Damn.” He dry-heaved a couple times for good measure, sat back on his heels a few minutes to really feel the quivery, cold-sweaty grossness, then hauled himself to his feet via the sink.

He splashed tepid water on his face and the back of his neck, rinsed out his mouth by cupping more of the stale stuff in his hands, and was ready to face the high-decibel music.

“Princess?” he called, wondering if she’d even hear him over her own racket. “Hela? That you, sweetiepie?”

The noise cut off abruptly. Tony caught a giant wash of relief/hope/gratitude followed by something like love, an uncertainty about being called “sweetiepie” by _anyone_ , and a semi-snotty, extremely Lokiesque correction of, I am _Valkyrja_ , not _Bean Sidhe_ , with a certain tone that seemed to indicate that  _Bean Sidhe_ were the side of the family nobody talked about, plus an implied correction to both his mental spelling and pronunciation. Not bad for a two-day-old.  Sure enough, this was Loki’s kid all right.

When he opened the bathroom door, Tony found Hela hovering just outside, more-or-less at eye-level. She’d grown to approximately the size of a miniature Chihuahua, the kind the spoiled heiresses of the world (looking at you, Paris Hilton) carried around in their handbags. She now possessed brows and lashes, as well as a cap of intensely curly jet-black hair. She was beautiful--beyond beautiful, too beautiful to be real, like some amazing piece of CGI conjured out of the digital world by someone who seriously, seriously knew his (or her) shit.

She was also--in her beauty and can't be-realness--significantly creepy.

Or maybe he meant scary. Potato potahto.

Hela's bare skin threw off white light, green light and—this was the weird part (one of the weird parts)—also a kind of intense dark gray _something_.

Tony reached up and pulled her out of the air, cuddling Hela against his chest as he did the baby-jiggle thing. Yes, folks, Tony Stark, billionaire, inventor, philanthropist, playboy was good with kids. So sue him. He could afford it.

Hela informed him that he was soggy and smelled unpleasant, then snuggled in closer, as if she could somehow crawl inside his skin and not have to feel whatever it was that made her so scared, and so sad.

Tony jiggled some more and sang " _Octopus’s Garden"_ to her in an undertone and out of key (though no more so, he had to say _,_ than Ringo in the original), while Hela cuddled in closer and commented that she was _by far_ the superior singer (though she did appreciate his sweaty, stinky loves) and what manner of botanical beast was this octopus and where, perchance, did its garden lie?

Tony stroked her feather-soft curls with a fingertip, and promised her they’d see one someday, with the most beautiful garden that ever was.

In return came a tsunami of the most horrible self-loathing, self-critical, grief-stricken, self-blaming, emotionally-cancerous, terrified bullshit he’d ever experienced, ripping through Hela's tiny self, the whole crappy lot of it so much like the ugliness inside Tony's own head it literally knocked him back a step.

He found himself holding the baby goddess right up close by his cheek, crooning, “No, darlin’, oh, no, darling girl, none of that, Hela, you’re perfect and lovely and smart and everything, everything good. Everything good.”

Eventually the sewer stream of emotion dried up. None of it had really been hers anyway, that Tony knew. Shit of that toxicity took time to brew. Years. Centuries.

 _Holy **fuck** , Loki,_ Tony thought, not really surprised to find a certain amount of sympathy embedded in the words. 

The flutter of Hela’s heartbeat against Tony’s palm quieted, until it was only the occasional small brush of a butterfly wing.

 _Now I have become very tired_ , Hela informed him, _And I would sleep beside my bold (though not particularly clever) brother, Fenrir Lokison, in the nest he has made, by good instinct, from the uniform of_   unnusti okkar _Kurt, beneath the metal shelf of discomfort, and there I will burrow into his soft fur despite the_ verdammt _heat of this room, and dream no dreams. And you, Man of Iron Without Armor, will set things right again, for that is the task unto which I have awakened you._

“As you wish, princess,” Tony told her.  What else could he say?

He settled Hela into the bowl of fabric her brother had repurposed out of Kurt's uniform (a garment fashioned from some of Reed Richard’s unstable molecule stuff, was Tony's best guess).  Fenrir had now grown to about the size of a mid-range lapdog (since canines seemed to have become Tony's standard of measurement), and he fit snuggly in the little nest, snoozing, to all appearances, without a care in the world, and snorflling quietly in his dreams.

Hela twisted her infinitesimal fists into the heavy ruff of silver-brown-black fur around her brother’s neck and rubbed her nose once or twice in the more silvery stuff on his chest before dropping immediately off to join him in sleep. Fenrir cracked a brown eye without really seeing anything, then curled around his sister in a fluffy, protective ball.

Tony gave the little wolf-boy's shoulder a gentle pat, then stroked that velvety fur a time or two.  The spiky green spell-lines Loki had left on his hand tingled pleasantly.

Fenrir had a silver ring slipped like a bracelet over one of his almost pawlike hands.

 _Goodnight, sweet dreams_ , Tony thought, then, _Goddamn Loki and his weird-ass shit and babies who talk inside your head like Grand Opera composed by five-year-olds._

But he didn’t mean it, not really.

Tony sighed. Time to survey the damage.

First of all, it appeared Kurt had stuck himself up to the ceiling in one corner, fetally-positioned and with his curly hair hanging down, his usually-frisky tail in such a such a dispirited droop it looked like one of the servant-summoning bell-pulls in Happy’s _Downton Abbey_ reruns, suitable only for calling for tea.

“Kurt.” Tony gave a gentle, experimental tug, hoping to get some sort of reaction.

What he got was: _“Lasă-mă în pace pentru o clipă! Doar o clipă!”_

Which, _whoa!_ Because although Kurt’s normal speech, both his casual German and very, very good English were crystal-clear, barring a tiny snaky sound on the esses.

If you had as healthy a pair of fangs in your mouth as Kurt did, that little hiss was probably unavoidable.  It certainly wasn't the least bit sinister.

This language, on the other hand--whatever it called itself--sounded like the crazy spitting cats of hell.

“All righty, then,” Tony said.

He was an engineer. He liked to fix things. He liked things to be fixable. And understandable, preferably through the combined superpowers of advanced math and extremely precise measurements. In metric. ‘cause Imperial was for wussies.

 _Was_ this mess fixable, by any stretch of the imagination?  Damned if he knew.

MacGyver probably could have fixed the whole damn situation with a paperclip, a triple-A battery and the foil wrapper from a piece of gum.  Fucking MacGyver, making everyone else look worthless.

Tony felt worse than worthless.  He felt shaky, and thick-headed, and weak.  He also felt close to desperate, and as if he'd really like to sit down in a corner, maybe cry for a little bit, then have somebody else take charge, somebody who knew how to get out of this damned cell, defeat Evil Rutger Hauer, and maybe bring his team--his _friends_ \--back to life.

He didn't want to, but he also felt responsible for the people here in the cell with him, even if all of them were strangers, and one of them almost certainly qualified as a foe.  No, not merely a foe--a _villain_.  A certified, dyed in the wool villain.

And yet Tony felt responsible.

" _'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?'"_ he muttered.  Which might have been Shakespeare.  Or not.  Pepper dragged him to a lot of weird shit, and it all tended to blend after a bit.

“Come down when you can, okay?” he called to Kurt.  If that didn't count as weak, Tony didn't know what would.

 _Way to handle the situation, Stark_ , he thought.

“ _Du-Te dracului!_ ” Kurt told him, swaying slightly in his upsidedowness.

“Okay.  Sure.” Tony ran both hands through his hair. Christ, Hela was right, he truly was disgusting.  He stank, not the least because he’d been wearing his Iron Man long underwear for about nine years.  All he really, _really_ wanted to do was go home to his lovely penthouse, shower for nine additional years, throw on some sweats and plug the little StarkTab he used for his music into his deliciously bassheavy StarkSound and let Mr. Angus Young and company blast away what remained of his pretending-I’m-not-actually-middle-aged hearing, preferably in the company of his previously mentioned friend, Mr. Glenmorangie.

Tony did not fix people. He barely understood people in his native language, from his home planet and from his own little corner of the United States. Not even Bruce _“I’m not that kind of doctor_ ” Banner, who was as touchy-feely as they came and would cheerfully (oh, okay, not cheerfully—empathetically, maybe?) remove seventy-foot tapeworms from the guts of downtrodden people in developing nations, would have wanted to tackle this particular level of people-fixing. None of the Avengers would.

Tony turned to the opposite corner, where he’d known Loki lurked all along, because weird as it might sound, whenever Loki was nearby, Tony kept a certain _awareness_ of him. He’d tried to tell himself it was a nails-on-chalkboard, goose-on-grave, hackles-rising, Stranger Danger sort of thing, but it wasn’t.

If he told the truth (not exactly a favorite occupation of his), Tony had to admit the sensation had more in common with that time, that one perfect time, on Pepper’s birthday.

He and Pep had enjoyed a more-than-excellent meal catered in, then cuddled in front of the fireplace listening to jazz (because Pep’s birthday, Pep’s choice, and besides Tony’s music was basically anathema--a word he’d learned from Pepper herself—and this was good jazz, Parker and Coltrane, all full of soul and coolness). Somewhere in the evening, they’d parted, Pepper to put on the superlatively excellent négligée he’d bought her (for once in his miserable life not screwing up her gift) and Tony to bring out the even better bottle of champagne he’d stashed away for exactly this occasion. Backing in through his bedroom door, bottle in one hand, flutes in the other, knowing Pepper was there, and so beautiful, so happy, so herself, loving him despite his unquestioned fuckitude, he’d felt this little shiver—what Pep called a _frisson_ when he told her about it later—that went through him, of just absolute _rightness_.

As if after (mumble mumble) years of manic flailing, Tony had found his still spot, the place where he could actually, for once in his miserable life, just _rest_.

And though it had turned out that maybe Pepper wasn’t his place of perfect rest after all, Tony had clung to the memory of that sensation as something sacred, the closest thing to holiness he had ever known, or was likely to know.

To have that quasi-sacred feeling jump to life again, in the presence of Mr. Bag-of-Cats God-of-Lies, kind of came as amore than a surprise.

“I kinda hate you,” he told Loki, in a really low voice, looking away from the corner where Loki was sitting. It was a cheap trick, worthy of Tony’s twelve-year-old self, who’d often said the same words, in the same way, to the late, unlamented Howard.

Loki’s head had fallen forward and at some point, presumably while Tony was out on the proverbial tiles, the Lokster must have decided to spiff up a bit, because as well as new, clean clothes he now had undeniable princess hair. It was shiny, wavy-curly, halfway down his back and black, as they say, as a raven’s wing.

It was just like the hair of Maria Teresa Esposito, daughter of his parents’ housekeeper, who broke Tony’s heart on a semi-permanent basis when he was eight and she was ten. The Maria Teresa Esposito who had taken her beautiful hair (and big, smart brain) on to not only international supermodeldom, but also to a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In other words, his perfect woman.

Last time he’d seen her, Maria had broken his heart again, just as thoroughly as she had as a flat-chested ten-year-old.

Some people just hit you.

But (Tony often reminded himself), the true tragedy of being thoroughly bi was that he could just as easily have his heart destroyed by a dude.

Yet another reason to miss the arc reactor he’d thrown away:  it had been heart armor.

“Yo, Loki.” Tony tried pulling on the god’s sleeve a little bit.  He felt scared now, along with everything else, in ways he couldn't exactly explain/

Loki’s head lolled. Tony had read about that—lolling--but never seen it. Now he knew.

It had the effect of Loki’s neck bones having dissolved, allowing his head to just flop around in whatever random direction. From an engineering standpoint, flopping heads seemed beyond inadvisable.

Tony imposed his shoulder to block the floppage and got his arm in behind the god’s shoulder’s, at which point he realized that, although Loki was crazy-skinny, he was also in the neighborhood of 6’2” – 6’3” if he was an inch, and the likelihood of Tony getting him back to the shelf gracefully on his own was pretty much equal to the likelihood of him being able to set up a ten person tent singlehandedly in the pitch dark.  Flailing and structural damage seemed imminent.

“Kurt?” he called, “Can you quit yelling at Dracula and get your shapely ass down here?”

“He told you to go to hell,” Loki ground out, in a kind of devil-voice-of-extreme-agony. “In Romanian.”

“Uh-uhn," Tony answered.  "I know your brother. You guys speak Allspeak. Cheater cheater Allspeak repeater.”

“You," Loki informed him, "Are nonsensical.  Even your tone-deaf ears ought to be able to determine that we are conversing in your native tongue.” He'd clearly tried for snarky on that one, but missed his goal by a mile.  The words came out... well... _whimpery_ instead.

 _Oh, honey,_ Tony thought, not entirely with sarcasm.  He couldn't help but harbor a certain sympathy for some who sounded so _wrecked_ , but was also trying so damn hard to carry on with a certain aplomb.

“Then why should Kurt be speaking Romanian and not German, smarty pants?"  His own voice betrayed him by making the words a joke--and a gentle one at that.  "Him being German and all.”

“Because although born and raised in Bavaria—which is in Germany," Loki told him wearily.

“I knew that.” Tony realized that he’d been stroking Loki’s beautiful princess hair as they argued. He couldn't even remember when he'd started. 

Maybe it was some kind of attraction spell?

Or maybe it was just really, really beautiful hair.

“Kurt grew up amongst the Roma, or similar peoples. Also known as Travelers, or Gypsies. I cannot comment as to why he speaks Romanian, rather than Romany…”

They were interrupted in this discussion by a soft thump, as Kurt’s feet hit the floor.

“ _Ach du Lieber,"_ he sighed Germanically. "You both frighten me. Lift his shoulders, please, Tony.”

Tony couldn't help but be impressed. Total meltdown to competently helpful in less than five minutes. Kurt was definitely the better man. No question but to obey.

Tony lifted. Loki’s head fell back against his arm and…

Tony heard a sad bunny sort of squeal come out of his own mouth.

“Tony, focus, please," Kurt commanded. "Help me lift him.”

The two of them didn’t do badly, really, with the lifting--considering that Tony couldn’t feel either his arms or his legs and the guy he was picking up had no goddamn fucking _face_.

Or he did.  Of course he did.  It was just that the handsome, chiseled features Tony expected had somehow been replaced by a sugar skull of pain.  Weird swirly lines that looked like they’d been gouged in with an Exacto knife covered nearly every inch of Loki's formerly-flawless skin, and drill holes--as in holes made by an actual fucking _drill_ \--chased each other all around Loki's s mouth and along his jawline. Around his eyes, where a legit sugar skull might have displayed cheerful daisies or chrysanthemums, no skin remained at all, only bare, twitching muscle tissue.

Where all that damage had come from, Tony hadn't a single clue. Had he shut it out, as something too gross to handle?  Had he just... failed to notice?

The only mercy Tony could see in all this was that, by this particular point, Loki appeared to have passed out cold.

Tony’s stomach lurched, lurched again, and decided there was an eighteenth year’s worth of cookies in there to toss after all. He excused himself rapidly.

He returned to find Kurt doing exactly what Kurt had started doing before his own impromptu bathroom break--namely,  cleaning Loki’s wounds head to toe (and Tony meant _head to toe_ ) in a careful, methodical way, using gauze sponges and some sort of clear liquid disinfectant that he'd taken from a large first aid kit.

When Kurt finished with all the gauzing and wiping and bandaging, he started in on the even more delightful snapping and realigning, a task both fascinating and horrifying to watch, and somehow even more sickening to listen to. Kurt would stop, close his eyes, look like he was listening really hard, then snap-crackle-pop he’d pull on one of Loki’s hand or foot bones (or shoulder or jaw bones for that matter) and everything would suddenly be neat and straight again.

“How do you do that without x-rays?” Tony couldn't help but ask.  “Shouldn't you be using x-rays?”

“I have a location sense as part of my ‘porting ability,” Kurt answered, still concentrating. “Normally, it allows me to tell the precise alignment of outside objects, so that I don’t end up fused with or around a some random part of the environment.”

“What, like a mutant stud-finder?”

Kurt laughed. “Essentially.”

“It ever let you down?”

“Once.”   Kurt held Loki's face--apparently gently--between his hands.  With a horrific dungeon-door grating, Loki’s jaw popped back into alignment.

Kurt paused, evaluating Loki's features (or so it seemed), for symmetry.

"And...?"

"I materialized around a man’s fist.  With his fist, that is, embedded in my chest."

“Christ, Kurt! What happened?”

Kurt’s unblinking yellow eyes turned to Tony's.

“What would you think, _mein Freund_?"  he asked quietly.  "Two solids can’t exist in one space. I died.”

Tony had no idea how to respond to that sort of statement. “It didn’t take?” he asked, finally.

After a moment, Kurt grinned. “It seems not. Help roll him toward me, Tony? That’s it."

"Gently," he reminded seconds later, freeing Loki’s tunic where it stuck to the god's skin—or rather, where his skin  _wasn't._

 _Such a fragile barrier_ , Tony considered, too shocked to snark.  It's just about translucent.  It hardly covers Loki's bones at all.

The raw places on Loki's skin were most obvious in the areas where those bones rose near to the surface, and that added up to a shitload of places. The god had become… well, to say he was painfully thin was like saying the surface of the sun got a little warm now and then.  Like Loki's skin, it didn’t really begin to cover things.

Tony pitied him.  He had to.  If you couldn't feel sympathy for someone who'd gone through that level of suffereing, you didn't deserve to call yourself a decent human being.  Tony knew he could be a little iffy on the decency scale now and then, but he hoped he'd never be _that_ devoid of feeling.

He kind of felt the need to throw up again.

Kurt’s strong hand cradled the back of Tony's head, pressing his face down into the lap of his filthy flightsuit.

Tony shut his eyes gratefully, waiting for the spinning to stop.

“Breathe, Tony," Kurt murmured. "Just breathe.  Everything's fine.  Everything's good.”

“Sorry to lose my shit,” Tony mumbled to his knees.

“Sometimes shit must be lost,” Kurt answered solemnly.

“I can sit up now, I think.”

“Slowly, then.” Kurt’s hands returned to the business of making methodical swabby movements.

The mutant (though somehow Kurt, blue fur and candleflame eyes aside, no longer struck Tony as particularly mutanty, seeming instead to be exactly _Kurt_ , made just the way, _as_ Kurt, he was meant to be) had gone through his two minute meltdown and now seemed perfectly, perfectly okay.

Tony slumped on the edge of the bench. The cell waltzed around him for a few more seconds, but he really had pretty much recovered, especially if he continued to stare at the blank white floor and not at Kurt's continuing cleanup duties.

“Better, _ja_?” Kurt glanced at Tony briefly, his blue face calm, even serene.  Clearly this wasn't his first rodeo.

“Better,” Tony agreed, then, “Why did he hide all that from us?” He gestured behind him, vaguely in the direction of Loki’s prone form.

“The habit of a lifetime, I think," Kurt answered, after another, slightly longer pause. "From what I know of them, which isn't a great deal, really, the _Æsir_ can be a strange people—searingly wise, yet casually, constantly brutal.  They adhere to extremely rigid standards of class and protocol, and the slightest misstep can lead to literal centuries of ostracization. Magic is inherent in their society, yet regarded with contempt as weak and womanly—the feminine, the softer way, the persuasive way is utterly dismissed. Their ruler, Odin’s, word cannot be gainsayed... and I will tell you, Tony, he can be a benevolent king, as your teammate Thor believes him to be, or a shockingly cruel and sadistic one. His mood is extremely fickle.”

“Lots of people had fucked-up parents, Kurt," Tony said. "I did. Maybe you did too.”

Kurt laughed quietly. Tony could hear him tidying up, gathering up his trash, finally shutting up the big metal box.

When his companion didn't answer, Tony finally forced himself to turn back, to see again what he hadn't wanted to see.

Loki appeared to be sleeping or unconscious, his head pillowed on the Kurt's thigh, Kurt’s two-fingered hand resting gently on his hair.

“What did your father do, Tony?” Kurt asked, so kindly Tony felt a totally involuntary prickle come in behind his eyes.

“Billionaire industrialist Howard Stark? I thought everyone knew.”  Tony hated the bitterness in his own voice.  So obvious.  So uncool.

“What did he do to _you_?” Kurt clarified.

“Drank. Slapped me around a little while drunk. Mostly just lacked belief that a little shithead like me could really be his kid.  Ignored me whenever possible. The butler raised me more than anyone else.”

“Jarvis,” Kurt said softly. “That was your butler’s name. A good man. Kind?”

“The best.” The prickling in Tony's eyes had become positively painful, and with it a giant lump had decided to form in his throat. “The very best.”

Kurt's gaze turned slightly downward--for Tony's benefit, he suspected, not because Kurt found the floor tile all that damn interesting.  No doubt he was fully aware of the impact those ever-burning eyes had on other people.  They were framed, by way of contrast, with the longest, thickest lashes Tony had ever seen, blue-black, like Kurt's hair.

He dared to look, really look, watching movement in those yellow depths, flickering movement almost exactly like candle-flames, warm and nearly hypnotic.

Tony tried to imagine Kurt as just a regular German guy, maybe with blue eyes and blonde hair, and couldn’t do it. Sitting there in his black leggings (leggings, for God’s sake, what kind of guy could rock leggings?) he seemed perfectly calm and content,  complete in his total Kurtness. For all his bravado, Tony had never spent five seconds that comfortable in his own skin.

“I bet you’re somebody’s adorable little devil-Smurf, aren’t you?” he found himself blurting out.

Kurt pealed laughter.

“He generally says ‘fuzzy elf,’ but yes. Yes, I am.” The German grinned.  There were dimples.

“Wolverine,” he added, looking positively fiendish.

“No!" Tony protested.  "And furthermore, _hell_ no.”

Kurt had to be shitting him.  He _had_ to be.

Kurt laughed again, clearly amused as all fuck.

“Wolverine— _the_ Wolverine—the one that goes toe-to-toe with The Hulk. Mr. ‘ _I’m the best at what I do and what I do ain’t very nice._ ’ The claw guy. Is your boyfriend. Who calls you fuzzy elf.”

“Usually only fuzzy _or_ elf, but yes.”

“My world view is destroyed. Destroyed, Kurt.  I mean it.”

Tony had only met Wolverine a couple times, in passing, but the guy was legendary. And scary. A legendary, scary berserker-rage mess. How did someone like that hook up with calm, kind and contented Kurt?

The German pulled his feet up and sat, cross-legged and comfortable on the hideously uncomfortable bench.

Tony continued to slump. “We’ve gotta get out of here, Kurt," he told the dirty, white-tiled floor, which really wasn't interesting in the least.

“ _Ja_ ,” Kurt said, "And I am open to suggestions.  Loki needs real help, far more help than I can give him with just a simple kit. I suspected that he’d lose the ability to maintain his glamour, but the fact that it’s happened means his life-force has ebbed dangerously low.”

"Glamour as in illusion," Kurt added.  "Shape-changing."

“Forgive me if Loki's not my priority number one right now," Tony answered, aware even as the words left his mouth that they were--partially, if not mostly--lies, all lies. Me, the kids, my friends out there, you," he fibbed on. "That’s it.”

“I’m so proud to be last on your list,” Kurt laughed, though his face (so far as Tony could tell) remained somber.

“You can always bamf your way off whenever you need to, right? I mean, it’s super nice that you’ve stuck around to look after Rudolph, but this might be the time to cut your losses and head back home. If you could take the kids, that would be even better. I’d prefer they were out of the line of fire when the shit hits the fan, and… What?”

Had Kurt been capable of giving puppy eyes, he clearly would have given them at that moment.

“No, really, what?”

Kurt appeared to consider.  Finally, he continued (clearly addressing the same patch of tile Tony had addressed seconds earlier.  “What was outside this cell yesterday, Tony... that is not what’s outside today. I’ve been searching for pathways, familiar spots I can exploit to jump out. I haven’t found anything. I don't believe this place..." he gestured, a graceful wave of his strange blue hand. "I don't believe--I truly don't--that this is the clever machine you designed.  That this is the helicarrier, or any other device of S.H.I.E.L.D.  I believe it is an illusion.  What was it Poe wrote? ' _All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream."_

 _Fuck.  That's encouraging,_ Tony thought.

"I don't mean to discourage you, or steal your hopes of freedom. Still..." Kurt's eyes flashed up, a darker color than Tony had ever seen them, their yellow bordering closer to orange.

"I can’t ’port blind,” he finished.

Kurt didn't  _quite_  sound like he'd plummeted into the depths of despair, but he sounded way closer to that dismal territory than Tony ever wanted to hear.

“So we’re stuck in here for the duration," he clarified.  "No food, no… What?”

“ _Mein Freund_ , I fear a lack of food is the least of our worries. My abilities include... let's say they include an awareness of magnetic lines.  It's easiest for me to 'port north or south, for example, west and east are a little more difficult--and so on. What this sense tells me..."

Tony gestured:  _go on?_

"We’ve..."  Kurt released a small gust of breath.  "Unless I'm wrong, Tony--though I don't believe I am, not in this.  This sense of mine tells me that we've been heading east, very fast, at speeds far beyond any a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier could realistically  maintain, for the entire time we’ve been airborne."

"Okay."  Tony didn't know what else to say.

"Beyond that, everything I’ve picked up from Loki and the children has indicated that he was kidnapped from Asgard, held against his will and experimented on through a series of bio-mechanical-magical devices that suppressed his own abilities."

"Bio-mechanical-magical devices," Tony repeated dully.

"You know..."  Kurt finally sounded a little more confident, more in line with his regular self.  "You are aware--you must be aware--that Loki completely threw the Battle of New York to your side last year, _ja_?"

 _Say what?_ Tony thought.

 _Maybe this actually **is** all a dream_ , he tried to console himself. _Maybe I'll wake up soon.  That would be good._

"You know Loki purposefully kept the wormhole small," Kurt, bearer of good news, continued, "That he deliberately ushered the alien ships through in limited numbers."

"Chitauri."  Tony's dull voice had returned, to no one's surprise, least of all his own. "They're called Chitauri."

 _Has anyone's head ever actually exploded from the forces of cognitive dissonance?_ he wondered.

"Yes. Chitauri," Kurt agreed, though his expression clearly said,  _Does it really matter?_  

"Loki is a skilled and ruthless military commander with centuries of expertise," he went on. "He is also a talented sorcerer. Why would he do such a thing, we have to ask ourselves?  Why would he lose deliberately, if not altogether obviously?”

“' _Pride goeth_ ,' and all that?  Arrogance leads to incompetence?"  The moment the words left his mouth, Tony knew for a fact they were wrong wrong wrong.

Christ, he wanted a cigarette, though he hadn't smoked in years.  More to the point, he would ( _almost_ literally, though not quite) have killed for a drink.  It wouldn't even need to be the good stuff.

"Try this," he suggested to Kurt, the words like rocks in his mouth, hard, hurtful little nuggets of truth. "Someone even stronger was trying to run him.” Tony felt weird.  Beyond weird.  Lightheaded,  no longer tethered by gravity, his whole worldview slide-slipping leftwards like crazy. “Loki couldn’t do _nothing_ , because his masters would tumble to his act, but he could sure fuck up their plans.”

"And he did," Kurt agreed.  He looked sad now.  Not scared, at least not in the same way Tony felt scared, but sad.  Grieving for Loki?

Tony's world slipped a little more.

All it had taken was a bunch of cranky weirdos called The Avengers, an itty-bitty wormhole and a freak guy in a red-and-yellow suit. That, and a prince...

A prince who was willing to shoulder an impossible burden, to let himself be a villain if, at the end, his actions saved a world.

"So whoever grabbed Loki this time appears to have been an even tougher, more ruthless bastard than Loki himself." Tony's voice had gone hoarse.  He had no doubt in his mind now that Loki _was_ tough.  Look at him, what he'd obviously been through, how he'd clearly fought harder than anyone should _ever_ have to fight to save those kids.

“So..." This was obviously another situation where being tough would be called for, and Tony guessed he'd better, for all their sakes, damn well rise to the occasion.  "Your theory is that we're traveling east at warp speed.  Any other ideas?”

"One." Kurt slipped down from the bed-shelf, moving to the big glass window at the front of the cell with strange, stalking grace, walking on the balls of his feet. From an engineering standpoint, Tony could tell, Kurt's his heels weren’t really meant to reach the ground. He'd be willing to bet the fauxlicarrier wasn't the only thing that moved at warp speed.  He'd bet that Kurt, when he hit the ground running, would be fast as fuck.

“I’ve traveled this way before, _mein Freund_." Kurt's voice sounded different now.  Not scared.  Not sad.  If anything, it sounded sympathetic.

For the first time, Tony noticed characters--etched, or floating, or _something_ in the glass.  Nordic runes, that's what they looked like, knotwork pictographs telling stories he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

"It’s nice to share, Kurt,” he said, finally, trying to keep his own voice light.  The silence had stretched out longer than he could comfortably tolerate.

“ _Ja_ ," Kurt answered, almost absently.  " _Ja_."

"And?" Tony prodded.  "In the interest of sharing?"

"A country called Latveria," Kurt said at last. "Tony, do you know it?”


	5. Ironwood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The problem of how to escape the fauxlicarrier cell can no longer be ignored, Tony comes to some surprising solutions. Why, sometimes, being BIG is a good thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe my only language note this time is that _ulfur_ (with the accent over the u) is Icelandic for wolf. I believe I forgot to notate that last time I used it.
> 
> " _The Time Warp"_ " is one of the best known songs from the 1973 rock musical, _The Rocky Horror Show_ and 1975 film version, _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_. "It's just a jump to the left...!"
> 
> "keister"=a person's backside
> 
> Mt. Saint Helens is an active stratovolcano located about 95 miles from Seattle, Washington. In 1980, it "blew" in a really big way. Ash hung over the area for weeks, and even now, nearly 40 years later, the devastation of the event is clearly marked over the landscape.
> 
> The name "ironwood" is used to refer many types of trees worldwide, the common feature of all being their hard, heavy wood. Tony's particular ironwood forest is made up of genus Ostrya (a name derived from the Greek word _ostrua_ , meaning "bone-like").
> 
> The original _The Blair Witch Project_ film (1999) is basically ALL about creepy, quasi-dark-magical things happening in a forest.

* * *

Tony was drifting off, wondering if he was going to die first from boredom or starvation, when Loki spoke up, suddenly and loudly, beside him. “I need the room of requirement.” Loki was frowning fiercely—scowling one might even have said, and though the raw places on his face had healed from the previous day’s red to an angryish pink, the sight was still slightly scary.

“Well, of course,” Tony answered crankily. A couple more minutes and he might just have passed some time with sleep he didn’t actually need. It made a nice break from coming up with means of escape that wouldn’t actually work outside a _Roadrunner_ cartoon. “How else will you train Dumbledore’s Army to defeat Voldemort? Oh, wait, that’s our side. I think you’re with No-nose.”

“Son of Stark…” For a moment Tony thought the magic word “please” was going to escape Loki’s lips, but then he slid forward violently, practically shoving himself off the shelf, made it a couple steps, fell hard, pushed himself up again.

“Loki. Dude.” Tony climbed to his feet, steadying the god before he could fall a second time. “C’mon, I’ve got you. It’s over here.”

He got an arm around Loki’s waist, Loki’s arm around his shoulder, steering him toward the back.

“Didn’t know you guys called it that. To us, that particular phrase means a magic room.” He thumbed the catch. “Though I guess if you’re desperate enough…”

Loki tore himself from Tony’s hold, flinging himself toward the sink and fumbling with the taps. Once the water flowed, he drank and drank in huge gulps, stray water splashing all over his princess hair. He pulled back to gasp for breath a few times, then drank a gallon or two more. The way he went about it wasn’t just kinda scary, it _was_ scary—the sheer desperation of it, the agony in every line of his body.

At last Loki turned off the tap with shaking fingers, still leaning with one hand on the edge of the sink, drawing the sleeve of his tunic across his dripping face.

“Stark,” he said hoarsely. His back kept making these little jerking motions, as if his body had completely other ideas about all that water he’d drunk, but he was going to hold onto it by force of will, “My thanks. I was correct in thinking you an honorable man.”

Loki's voice trembled, and he was clearly fighting, fighting every step of the way.

“That was a pretty good trick you played, incidentally,” Tony told him. “With that green temporary tattoo you gave me? It’s the reason I’m here with you guys instead of lying at the bottom of a stack of discarded superheroes. Where there’s life there’s hope, right?”

Before Tony’s eyes, Loki just folded up and dropped flat on his ass, long legs sprawling everywhere, taking up every last inch of inch of space in the miniscule restroom and making Tony jump to the left like he was doing the _Time Warp_. He wasn’t unconscious—at least, his eyes were open—but there was such a bleached pallor to his face (above and beyond his everyday bleached pallor) that Tony couldn’t for the life of him figure out what had happened between Loki’s not-even-grudging compliment and the god’s keister hitting the tile. Instantaneous water overdose?

Tony knew water overdose _was_ an actual thing, but he’d thought you acted a little bit like a drunken asshole first.

Unless acting like a drunken asshole was beneath Loki.

Tony climbed over one apparently endless leg to get to the space between Loki’s knees. “Loki. Yo, Lok. You want to clue me in to what just happened?”

Loki didn’t answer. A single tear streaked downward from each of his brilliant green eyes. Tony tried really hard not to think how beautiful he was, despite the fading scars, with those eyes and the more-than-humanly-shining tears and the way his face wasn’t the face of a villain or a god or even a man, but the face of a badly-injured boy, or how looking at that face hurt him in weird places inside his gut.

Emotional then, not physical. Very deeply emotional.

“Loki?” Tony sat carefully on the floor, taking one of Loki’s hands between his own, rubbing warmth into the chilly fingers as he tried to figure out what he’d said, trying equally hard not to be distracted by that hand, either. Because of course it was the most beautiful hand he had ever held (sorry, Pep, including yours), fragile and strong at the same time, with preternaturally long and slender fingers.

Somewhere between one eye-blink and the next, Tony found the palm pressed to his cheek, skin softer than the skin of a child, and a distant fountain of grief bubbling in the back of his head.

_Oh!_ he thought, feeling his own eyes well.

Never in his own life—not even when his mom died —had he felt so bereft. He was in a garden, suddenly, a fabulous garden filled with plants and flowers he’d never seen, cold stone under his butt, a bench of some kind, where his own body felt so chilly, and so breakable, but the arms around him were comforting, warm and fabulously strong.

Something turned, and he was balanced between the earth and the sky, a billion stars and the twisting ribbon of the aurora borealis overhead, against a vast indigo velvet backdrop. He was flying and not flying, balanced at the front of a sledge or a sleigh, bells chiming like mad on the night air, steam rising from the backs and flanks of the reindeer ahead, hair whipping like crazy around his face as he turned to call back over his shoulder, “Oh, Thor, by the Nine, I can see! I can see!”

_Wait… Thor?_

Tony seized Loki’s other hand. “Wait, Loki, shit, no. Thor’s not dead. At least I’m pretty sure he’s not dead. Yeah, he got flashy-thinged by Sir Ladyhawke, but he was definitely breathing last time I saw him, so you can chill, okay?”

Loki’s breath stuttered in his throat. He pulled his hands away from Tony’s to push himself up to a straighter position against the side of the sink, his knees pulled up to his chest.

Not even wondering what the hell he was doing, Tony reached up to brush those twin tear-trails off Loki’s cheeks. Even though they were mostly too faint now to see, he could still feel the little knots where the drill-holes had been. And it kinda broke his heart. It did.

Suddenly he didn't just want to protect The Siblings Lokison (and _dottir_ ) he wanted to protect their _Pabbi_ , too. And if that was some kind of a spell, so what, he didn't care.

Loki didn’t even blink as Tony’s thumbs came near his eyes. Tony let the touch linger, his hands cupping Loki's face, wondering, really, what in hell had happened to the arrogant, psychotic badass who’d thrown him off his own tower last year. Did Loki have the Nine Realms’ worst case of Dissociative Personality Disorder?

More to the point, _had_ someone else been driving the bus throughout the whole mess, like Kurt said?

Tony was damned if he knew. The more he thought about it, the more he thought his fuzzy blue friend was probably correct. It added up a little better if you thought of it that way. One thing was sure, Thor loved his kid brother, and it appeared the feeling was mutual. Tony was certainly finding himself feeling a weird kind of sympathy.

And he was still cupping Loki’s face between his hands.

Not that that was embarrassing.

Tony gave the god’s shoulder an awkward little pat before jumping to his feet, offering Loki a hand. Those long, beautiful fingers hovered in the air a minute, almost as if tasting its currents, before they wrapped around Tony’s sturdier hand. Maybe it was hesitation to take anyone’s help, maybe it was just that his sight was still totally screwed up from whatever havoc the mask had played with his eyes.

Tony thought of that excited, black-haired boy, windswept beneath the resplendent northern skies. “We’ll get him back, Loki,” he said. “We will.” He realized he was still holding Loki’s hand, and Loki was holding his.

“You okay now?” Tony asked him.

“Yes.” Loki’s face turned to his, puzzled sad-looking eyes over knife-edged cheekbones. “Yes… Tony.”

 

Loki fed the children, Hela first, because she was most fragile, and Jӧri, half-snake and half-almost-human, coiled around Loki’s leg and latched onto one of the god’s sculpturally beautiful ankles. He drank and drank, and Tony began to understand Loki’s burning thirst, his weakness. He cuddled Fenrir on his lap, smoothing his fur, letting the puppy? cub? little boy? suck and gnaw on his fingers as his sister sang a faint song of hunger and dissatisfaction.

Kurt returned from overlooking the front of the cell to detach Jӧri gently from his meal. “Enough, _liebling_. Let your _Pabbi_ rest.” He reached beneath Loki’s tunic to detach Hela, setting Fen up in her place. A few minutes of powerful sucking followed, then only the little one’s sad mewling.

Loki himself appeared to be out cold; Tony could see the bones of his skull through his skin.

_Oh God, they’re starving_ , Tony thought. _Loki can’t feed them any longer, we can’t get out, we…_

He listened to Jӧri’s hissing sobs, Fenrir’s whimpers, Hela’s tragic song.

“They aren’t crying because they’re hungry,” Kurt said softly, “They are crying because of Loki, because they know they’ve hurt him by feeding from him, and they worry for him, _ja_?”

Kurt placed the three no-longer-so-small babies by Loki’s side and rose, bending bonelessly to retrieve his uniform from underneath the shelf. He dressed slowly, thoughtfully, stretching the more-than-tight fabric over his furry blue skin.

Tony watched him, too stupefied (for a supposed genius) to get what he was up to. He only stared into Kurt’s candleflame eyes beneath that crazy mop of blue-black hair, watched light and shadow shift across the velvet-covered bones of his face.

“Auf Wiedersehen, _mein Freund_ ,” Kurt told him softly.

And _went_.

The noise of the air imploding and the lingering smell of rotten eggs drove Loki awake and even upright.

“Kurt?” he breathed. “Kurt?”

“It’s okay,” Tony said. “It’s all right. He’ll be back.”

But apparently you not only don’t bullshit a bullshitter, you especially didn’t bullshit the god of lies. Loki glared at him with a tragic and confusing mix of disdain mingled with horror—but then it all collapsed.

“My friend,” he said, in a terrible small voice that had nothing at all of his usual self (actually, either of his diametrically opposed usual selves) in it. “My friend. Oh, my friend.”

Tony wasn’t feeling exactly great either. All he could hear was the kind young German telling him, “Two solids can’t exist in one space. I died.”

He wondered what solids, if any, were waiting for Kurt this time. Without Kurt (and he knew Kurt had attempted this courageous, reckless, incredibly idiotic thing in a last-ditch effort to save all their respective asses) chances were they were not getting out of there. The babies were amazing for their age, but, face it, they were babies, Loki was so weak he couldn’t even make milk to feed them--he’d probably been consciously breaking down vital body tissues to keep them going this far--and, okay, being Tony Stark was pretty damn fantastic under circumstances involving things like parts, tools and power supplies, but you can’t make lemonade without lemons and unless he actually _could_ magically transform into MacGyver (fucking MacGyver)and gain the ability (along with all that) to engineer some sort of escape device out of tap water, toilet paper and Loki’s princess hair, their collective gooses appeared to be cooked.

Tony was contemplating the possible cutting power of baby dragon scales when Kurt popped back into view.

The mutant was breathing frantically, like a severe asthmatic with a badly misplaced inhaler. His right hand was bleeding, and a side-wedge of his tail. Also, something was seriously off with his right foot—but he was alive. He said something quickly to Loki in German.

Loki, who Tony could have sworn was unconscious, sat up, said something in return and set Jӧri on his shoulder, instructing him, “Coil tight, my dearest.” Which wasn’t something you got to hear a parent say to his child every day.

Loki handed Hela and Fenrir off to Tony, not even bothering to tell him to hold them tight.

Like he wouldn’t have.

Like he wouldn’t have protected them with his life.

They all bundled close, Loki saying another thing to Kurt in German, to which Kurt replied, _Nein_ , and something else Tony didn’t understand—wouldn’t have understood anyway because they were already jumping, in the most horrible bone-wrenching, soul-destroying, oh-just-turn-my-stomach-inside out-and-dump-the-contents-over-my-head way Tony could not ever have imagined, because if you could imagine something like that happening to you, you were too sick a puppy to live.

They came out into open air for three seconds, then started sliding fast down some giant metal tube, Kurt slowing the whole lot of them slightly with his magic suction cup hands and feet. Then they bounced out again into really open air.

Really, really open. As in way up high in the open air.

Tony couldn’t help it. He screamed. And yes, there was a certain less-than-macho quality to the sound--the pitch alone would probably have shattered wineglasses.

Tony thought he could live with that. If, that is, he was actually allowed to live. Loki was screaming too, which gave Tony some satisfaction until he realized that it wasn’t so much the shriek of a terrified kindergartner (as his had undoubtedly been), it was a skilled and powerful spell that stopped them suddenly, dead-still in midair.

Loki’s nose dripped thin, pinkish-looking blood, and tears of the same blood streamed down from his eyes, but he kept up that steady stream of complicated words and gestures like a trouper. It was Kurt they were losing. His eyes were down from a cheery bright yellow to that sad orange glow that happens just before your flashlight’s about to die, and his tail had gone completely boneless.

Kurt's tail and hand still dripped like crazy, but Tony didn’t think it was blood loss that was knocking him back on the tiles, it was his mutant battery running down to absolute zero. So, of course, Tony did what any sympathetic friend would do—smacked him hard as he could across the face.

Kurt’s head rocked back on his neck, his eyes momentarily flared, and in that brief moment of awareness, he jumped one last time.

Tony would have preferred to forget the next part. It involved a lot of rolling over stony ground, getting sticks up tender places, and puking.

Especially the puking.

 

By the time some marginal sense of consciousness returned to Tony, night had apparently fallen, pressing down on him with a quality of blackness that went beyond pitch and obsidian and into a thickness perhaps approached only by the ignorance of science-deniers on the Christian Right.

He had no idea where Loki and Kurt found themselves, because he’d tried calling to them and hadn’t hear a peep. He knew the kids were okay because he’d held onto his two until the crucial rolling-and-poking bit of the festivities, and because he’d dreamed of them--in a way maybe that wasn't actually dreaming--singing sweetly and sleepily among themselves.

The soul-crushing fatigue and nausea hadn’t hit them the way it hit him, they were only tired babies, glad to be free in the woods (if still hungry) all cuddled up in Fenrir’s warm fur.

_Goodnight, sweet loves_ , he tried sending to them.

_Goodnight, sweet Uncle Tony_ , they returned, and he fell asleep without another thought, despite the sticks and stones.

Night fell harder, and Tony slept.

He woke at daybreak--really _just_ at daybreak—to light was cold, silvery and sharp, just like the trees all around him. Gazing up at the sky, at the pale and bone-like forest around him, a memory returned to him of flying over Mt. St. Helens when he was a young man, maybe a decade after the volcano blew, seeing the trees that had been stripped silver-bare, laid out in straight even lines by the blast, like a complicated game of dominoes laid out by a giant with a severe case of OCD.

The forest where Tony lay now had the same perfectly straight lines, as if the trees had been planted in rows, one by one by one. They weren’t huge trees—the tallest, the few left intact anyway--probably would have topped out at fifteen meters or so in height.

"The few left intact," was, in the case of this particular forest, the operative phrase.  Most of the branches, and better than two thirds of the treetops had been not cut, not trimmed, but _shattered_ off. There wasn’t a trace of a leaf anywhere, unless you counted a few brown paper-shreds at least a season or more old. The gray trunks, diseased-looking, bore spatters of white.

_Ironwood trees,_ Tony thought. _Ostrya carpinifolia_. The _Ostrya_ part meant bones, because their wood was said to be hard as bone. Botany had never been so much his thing, he didn’t know how he knew the name, but he did

He'd fallen into a forest of bones. A skeleton wood. Some of the trunks even had runes carved in, indecipherable letters as long as Tony’s arm.

“Son of a Blair-fuckin’-Witch,” he muttered.

Tony wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.

Barring that, he wanted Loki and Kurt and the kids. How much he wanted them still felt a little weird to him.

The kids were easy enough, they were sweet, funny, adorable in their strange way, and Kurt was a good guy, maybe one of the best guys he’d met in his life. What person (who wasn’t an extreme mutant hater) wouldn’t like Kurt? The enormity of what the German had done for them continued to be a little too big for Tony to wrap his mind around.

But Loki? Mr. Bag-of-Cats God-of-Lies? Mr. Oops, You’re Standing In My Way, Let Me Just Throw You To A Horrible Death?

Of course, there was also the Loki who'd fought off convulsions to grab his hand and give up practically the last bit of magic he possessed to protect his kids (and to protect Tony so that he could help the kids). The Loki who’d literally thrown himself to earth in the backyard backyard of his enemies because he’d seen something honorable in him, Tony Stark.

The Lok who trusted him. Who believed in him, one could say.

How many other people believed in him? Even the ones who liked him expected him to screw up eventually, and sometimes they were right (and wasn’t that true of everyone? screwing up was definitely one thing he didn’t hold proprietary rights on—it was something even the Peppers and Rhodeys and Steves of the world did as well, though it seemed as if the Tonys and, yes, the Lokis got all the blame) and other times they weren’t. Sometimes he was brave, true, dependable, even noble, and weirdly enough, maybe, now and then, Loki shared those qualities too.

Maybe every time Loki did something good people were looking at Thor, admiring Thor, the same way every time Tony did something good, Cap got the credit.

Guys like Thor and Cap were admiration magnets. It didn’t mean they weren’t good guys, it just sucked to be the piece of dog shit standing next to them. If you were smart and talented, like him, or clever, talented and gorgeous, like Loki, it made getting cast as Piece of Dog Shit #1 time and again just that much more infuriating. The urge to lash back, even just a little bit, was always there.

Tony thought of Loki’s face, in the world’s smallest bathroom, his bravery, the tenderness he showed his children, his sadness for his brother, those snippets of memory, the sweet, heartbroken, joyous boy calling out, “ _Thor, I can see!_ ”

How in hell could he trust Loki, though? Why would he want to take the time and trouble? Maybe because inside his scarred, broken, barren, recently-repaired heart, Tony was (to kinda--to his shame--quote fucking Morrissey) “ _Human and needed to be loved, just like anybody else does_.”

Loki, with his sad, wounded, untrusting, crazy-as-a-bag-of-cats, insanely-loving-and-courageous heart touched something in Tony.  He did.  And maybe Tony had been going about it wrong all along, relationshipwise. Maybe it was supposed to be like math, where two negative numbers could make a positive.

Maybe it was worth a try, if they got out of this one alive.

 

Tony didn’t have to go far before he came upon them—he’d been following a warm little hum in his head that was Hela’s sleep-song, reliable as GPS. It got louder as she woke, louder still as his mind touched hers, an ecstatic trill.

_Morning, princess,_ Tony sent _. Who’s there with you? Everyone okay?_

An image of Fenrir as a very large wolf, Jӧri perching in dragon-shape on his back.

_Worthy of Epics Brothers, Sons of Loki, go to hunt for food. Sad Hela Lokisdottir must stay behind, because of smallness, and must drink milk, but_ Pabbi _does not make good milk for me yesterday or today. I sing and sing to him to make the milk better, but he does not make it better._

_Sweetie, I think it’s been a long time since your_ Pabbi _had any good milk himself and that’s why he’s having a hard time making yours._

Pabbis _don’t drink milk, silly,_ Hela informed him.

_Well, what do they drink, then? Mead?_

_Mead is made from honey and honey is of the great and terrible sorrow of the Narfi-and-Vali time, so_ Pabbis _most definitely do not drink mead_.

Hela sounded so sad after that, Tony tried telling her something silly to cheer her up, but Hela did not respond. She maintained her guiding hum--otherwise, radio silence. He was glad to stumble into the space where the others lay a couple minutes later, last (as usual) to the party.

Jӧri, now in the shape of a dragon the size of a golden retriever, perched atop a fallen tree, merrily savaging what looked like a very large leg o’deer. Now and then bits of skin or, well, deer flew through the air and landed below, Kurt picking them out, as appropriate, from his or Loki’s hair, discarding them to one side.

Hela had a very small piece of meat that she was holding as if someone had handed her a turd and sniffing occasionally. They’d been joined, apparently, by one of the werewolf cast of _Twilight_ , only not in cheesy unconvincing CGI. He was HUGE. His breathing sounded like a steamtrain gathering speed. He smelled fiery and earthy and overwhelmingly wild. His eyes glowed like coals from the bowels of hell.

Tony felt a sudden desire to wet himself in fear.

_Look at me BIG, Uncle Tony!_ boomed Fenrir’s voice inside his head. _Am I not a beautiful úlfur? I have brought the elk of the forest for us all to break our fast upon together on this morning!_

Tony looked. Yup, Fen was right. It was an elk, not a deer.

He walked to where the giant wolf stood, standing on tiptoe to wrap his arms the third of the way around that they’d actually reach and whispered in the enormous ear, “Yes, sweetheart, you are a beautiful _úlfur_. The best, most beautiful úlfur that ever was. Eat up your breakfast now, and you can help us get out of here.”


	6. A Creature from Hel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Kurt overlook something obvious, delaying their departure from the Ironwood. Once they finally get going, it quickly becomes clear that someone (or something) is on their trail, and that he, she or it is well known--but in no way expected--by Kurt. Loki devises a plan to increase his own strength, then sends their lurker home with a pointed message.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The illustrated sex manual, _The Joy of Sex_ by Alex Comfort, was organized to resemble a cookbook (namely, _The Joy of Cooking_ ), with sections for starters, mains, etc. It was first published in 1972 and updated in 2008.
> 
> First World=the developed, capitalist, industrial countries
> 
> Writer and television presenter Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls does is known for doing extremely adventurous things in the Great Outdoors. Among his best known outings was the series _Man vs. Wild_.
> 
> Kurt's quote, "We live, not as we wish to, but as we can" is from the Greek playwright Menander, circa ~250 BC.
> 
> onay on the ongsay?="no on the song?" Tony's speaking the Pig Latin.
> 
> stage whisper=a loud and obvious whisper. 
> 
> "”The mysterious prophecy's format was inspired by an English translation of the Old Norse poem _Völuspá_.
> 
> Oh, Kurt, what a contradictory origin you've been given, especially where your foster brother Stefan Szardos is concerned! For the purposes of simplicity:
> 
> 1) The Szardos family were magic users.  
> Margali (eventually of the Winding Way) agreed to care for Baby Kurt as a favor to his demonic bio-dad Azazel after Kurt's bio-mom, the mutant shape-shifter Mystique chucked him down a waterfall (or possibly over a cliff) after her true shape was revealed during childbirth.  
> 2) Azazel wasn't motivated by fatherly love. Rather, he was begetting children to ripen for later use in a spell that would restore him to his kingdom.  
> 3) In my headcanon Margali and Stefan siphoned off Kurt's latent _Neyaphem_ magical energy for their own nefarious uses  
>  4) When Kurt was in his late teens and Stefan in his early twenties, a number of children in the town of Winzeldorf, Bavaria went missing. Several were later found dead.  
> 5) Kurt suspected that his brother had gone to the darkside and went searching for him, hoping to find the truth.  
> 6) Kurt discovered that his beloved brother was, in fact, a child-murdering serial killer (which may or may not have been entirely his fault, depending on whether he happened to be possessed at the time).  
> 6) Kurt implored Stefan to turn himself in. Stefan had other plans. The brothers struggled and the tail (as it wall do) got a little too frisky. As a result, Stefan's neck was broken.  
> 7) Stefan (according to me) has been dead and confined to _Helheimr_ ever since.
> 
> And finally, a little touch of FrostIron in the night!

* * *

It would have been clear to anyone who knew--or, for that matter, had _ever_ known--Tony that he’d never been a Boy Scout. Putting away all "plays well with others" considerations, he'd always been too big a fan of First World delights, things like central heating, uninterrupted access to electricity and, yes, sleeping in an actual bed, to enjoy the hardy outdoor life.  He understood the _theories_  behind several Boy Scoutesque skills, fire-bows among them, the same way he knew how to build (in a general kind of way) any number of things.  Knowing _exactly_ how to make them, however, took away half the fun, aka The Joy of Tinkering, which in Tony's book rated almost (though not quite) up there with The Joy of Sex.

Tinkering--enjoyable as it might be--wasn't exactly something he had time for under the current circumstances, and no one present really gave a rat's ass whether Tony built stuff better when he had access to actual tools and materials--or at least tools and materials a lot less shitty than the Ironwood was able to provide for his use.  Neither could he expect a whole heaping lot of recognition for doing what he could with what happened to be at hand, especially since the result of his efforts was the saddest thing ever in the history of badly-constructed things. Tony (truth be told) kind of hated to claim the misshapen fire-bow as his own. He felt fairly certain that he could feel the disembodied spirits of MacGyver (again!) and manly adventure-man Bear Grylls standing over him, both shaking their heads sadly.

Hela's unspoken reaction (one tiny black gull-wing brow raised imperiously, as if to say, _**That's** the best you can do?"_  struck him as particularly damning.

He wanted, with a desperation so deep Tony almost didn't recognize it as desperation, to help.  He wanted to Feed His People.

At the same time, he'd clearly lost whatever skills he'd once possessed.  Even Kurt "Mr. Positive" Wagner couldn’t quite keep the skepticism out of his eyes.

“ _You_ make one, then,” Tony crabbed back at him. “Since you're getting all sniffy about mine.”

“I can _eat_ fire,” the mutant said mildly, “Not make it by rubbing sticks.”

Tony grumped something under his breath to the effect of " _not rubbing sticks_ " but left it at that. Kurt, he had to admit, looked exhausted.  He'd slumped against a fallen tree-trunk, Loki draped across his lap, his shoulders supported in the crook of Kurt’s arm.  Allowances should probably be made.

Loki's head rested on Kurt’s shoulder.  The fallen god looked somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% dead, with skin not only white as paper but nearly translucent, his eyes sunken in deep, dark, purple-edged pits. Hela now lay cuddled in his lap, crying in a tiny, crystalline voice that Tony found nearly heart-shredding.

He tossed aside the fire-bow--it was worthless anyway, worthless _and_ useless, just like he was--and crouched, brushing Loki’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. The skin burned, too impossibly hot for any living creature to survive, however godlike.

“You hold on for us," Tony found himself pleading.  "You hear me, Lok? We’ll work something out.  We will.”

"We will," Kurt agreed, though his eyes had started darkening to orange again.

Hela let out a pitiful little ripple of melody.

“You know…” Tony sank down on Kurt’s other side, leaning his head on Kurt’s unoccupied shoulder. The two boys, wolf and dragon, left off their steady demolition of the elk carcass for a moment to regard them.

There was nothing he could think to do, absolutely nothing, and so he went for his default, running his idiot mouth again.“If you weren’t already a full-time X-Dude, you know, I’d probably feel compelled to hire you, Kurt. Poach you right away from the Jean Grey School.”

“ _Ja_?” Kurt blinked, his irises like twin sunsets. 

“Yup. I feel Stark Industries needs an employee with comprehensive teleportation, medic, and circus skills on the payroll. Especially the circus skills. We’re seriously lacking. Do you sword-swallow too?”

“ _Ja_ ,” Kurt repeated, “I can. Though I am more dangerous as a fencer, _natürlich_.” He glanced down at Loki’s face, brushing a few loose strands of black hair away from the god's pallid cheek, his own face, all Northern European angles and soft blue fur, inexpressibly kind.

“I suppose…” He curled up his right leg carefully, and it struck Tony for the first time what he’d noticed without noticing—half of Kurt’s… ankle?... Tony guessed it would be called, the part with the backward-facing toe that could curl around with the frontward-facing toes to grip almost like a bird’s talon was just… gone.

Kurt had made his best guess, Tony knew then, and jumped, with nothing but courage and determination to guide him.  When his best guess proved only good enough for survival, not enough to avoid injury, he'd ripped himself out of the wall and come  
back for them.

“God, Kurt,” Tony said, feeling like the most shitty, unworthy person in the history of unworthy persons. He touched Kurt’s foot gently, but the young mutant didn’t seem to notice.

“I suppose…” Kurt continued quietly, no judgment in his voice, only a strong sense of _listen to what you're actually saying_. “For a man such as yourself, handsome, the son of a billionaire, a man of education, it’s _vielleicht_ an amusing thing—gypsy boy, circus freak…?” Between his soft German accent and his fangs, the word got twisted into something painful and ugly. “Only  
remember, _mein Freund_ , ‘ _We live, not as we wish to, but as we can_.’ I lived as best I could, Tony. I hadn’t your options.”

“Oh, no, no, _no_ , Kurt, you don’t think…?” Tony stared at the young mutant, horrified that Kurt would even  
consider he’d be so insensitive that…

“I only meant, is there anything you can’t do?” he mumbled, almost numb with shame.  "Keep in mind, when I'm shit-scared I talk and/or drink--and at the moment I'm fresh out of alcohol.

"Tony."  Kurt curled his hand around Tony's wrist, his grip all velvet and iron, the texture of his palm like fine sandpaper.  How that particular texture allowed Kurt to move as he did, in defiance of gravity, was anyone's guess.

The kindness of the gesture, that's what really struck him, though.  That kindness, and the tenderness, the complete acceptance, in the younger man's voice struck Tony as nearly unbearable.

Tony tried hard to swallow around the boulder of emotion suddenly lodged in his throat.

As if to give him a sense of space not otherwise available, Kurt glanced down at Loki. The silence that followed could only be called "telling." Clearly no one wanted to say it, least of all Tony himself, but things weren’t looking good. The god had  
fought the good fight, but it became increasingly obvious that he didn't have much left to fight _with_.

The thought, _He was already dying when he came to you_ , popped into Tony's head, followed by, _He came to **you** , Stark_.  _To **you**.  Now what do you fucking plan to do? _

Tony wished he knew.  He wished he had even the slightest _inkling_ about what move to make next. He felt weepy and prickly-eyed and frighteningly hungry, and he sure as shit didn’t want to spend the next however-many-hours fucking around with some inoperative primitive tool to cook some elk the boys had been happily chomping down raw for the past two hours.

He wanted that fucking elk seasoned and grilled to perfection by a celebrity chef in a five-star restaurant, and like Veruca Salt, he wanted it _now_.

Except, that wasn't what he really wanted at all.  What he really, really, _really_  wanted was for his friend to not be dying.

 _Best-beloved Uncle Tony_ , Hela sang in his head. _You call most worthy-of-sagas_ Pabbi _"friend?"_

 _I do, honey,_ Tony answered, _From here on out, I do._ Heturned his gaze toward her, meaning to meet her fierce malachite eyes, hoping to encourage her with whatever confidence he could manage to fake at the moment.

Instead he found those eyes faded, pale-green and frosted, like seaglass _._

Hela's songs had faded, too, into little drifting nebulous clouds of melody, and it didn't exactly require a genius I.Q. to to figure out why:  when they lost Loki, they'd lose her too.

And here Tony'd thought everything would be solved by their escape. All that sacrifice to gain... what?  Nothing, he thought.  Nothing in the end.

Tony stopped himself, breathing carefully. laying a hand over his eyes. He was about to lose it. He _was_ losing it.  This damned forest wasn't just a graveyard of trees, it was a fucking graveyard of hope.

 _Uncle Tony...?_ Hela's voice barely trembled the air.

In answer, Tony gave a vague sort of despairing grunt. 

 _You have sadness,_ she ventured. _You hunger as I do, and do not care to eat of the blood-dripping meat of the elk._

_That’s one way of putting it, darling._

_What was the purpose of the bow you built--the ridiculous small bow of inefficiency?_

_Thanks for the critique of my engineering skills. It’s a fire-bow, Hela. It starts fires by friction._

_Have you perhaps forgotten the presence of my worthy-of-sagas brother, Jӧri? Who is_ dreki and _makes fire  with his breath?_

At which point Fen tore off a chunk of elk and tossed it onto a big rock, where Jӧri bathed it with flame until the meat had roasted perfectly. Not a five-star restaurant in the world could have cooked it better.

Kurt started giggling, with more than a touch of hysteria. “ _Ach, ja_ , let’s built a fire-bow. We wouldn’t want to ask the dragon.”

“Smart ass,” Tony told him, but he was laughing too--or at least cry-laughing.  Hungry as he was, Tony hadn't been sure he even be able to eat--he felt that stressed.  Then he found that he could.  He _totally_ could.  He'd just consider himself lucky if he managed to do so without  drooling.

 

Tony didn't think much of the day could have passed, certainly not enough time to have moved from the hazy morning hours,  though to noontime, afternoon and on to night.  Nonetheless, sticky-looking charcoal-colored shadows had begun to stretch out in long fingers around the roots of the broken trees, the eerie ambiance only ripened by the Blair Witchy stick-shapes, runes and shattered branches.  The broken, bloodied, and now nearly-stripped-bare elk carcass also didn't do much to lighten the atmosphere.

Neither--though Tony hated to point out the fact--did Hela's new song, a wordless melody that skirted the upper range of Tony's hearing and set his hair and teeth on edge.  Clearly something in the pitch or frequency didn't appeal to Fen, either, because he'd burst, at unexpected moments, into earth-rumbling yowls.

Tony lifted the little girl up gently from Loki's lap, setting her at the base of her brother’s neck, which in Fen's BIGness appeared at least the width of a twin mattress.  The thick gray-brown-black fur rippled around her, a living nest that all but hid Hela from view.

“Just a suggestion, princess..."  Tony brushed a large clump of that fur away from her face.  "Not now, maybe?"

"Onay on the ongsay?" he added in a loud stage whisper.

 _But the shadow, the shadow, the shadow_ , Hela sang back to him, paying his attempt at schoolyard humor all the attention it deserved.  _Creeping round and round us, following_.

 _Fuck_ , Tony thought.

“Okay, the next Norse god I hook up with…” Tony began, forcing face and voice both into a sham of cheerful oblivion, pretending he hadn't heard a word Hela said, even as he bent, trying to help Kurt raise Loki off the ground. “Is gonnas be short.  Petite, even.  I'm thinking no more than five-foot-two, five-foot-three tops.  The one _we_ have is too damn tall.  He looks like Jack Skellington but weighs a ton.  How is that even possible?”

Kurt’s pointed ear came near to Tony's mouth as they finally managed to heave the god across his son's broad, furry back. “Hela says..." he whisper-gasped, trying hard not to pant.  Loki really was inexplicably heavy.  "We’ve picked up a shadow."

"Oh, _ja_?" By Kurt's response, Tony might have been commenting on the weather--he sounded that unconcerned.  Smiling, he boosted Tony up behind the limp sprawl that was Loki, raised Hela from her furry nest and settled her into the crook of Tony's arm.

Kurt's candleflame eyes burned clearly, brightly.  He gave Tony's wrist a brief, warm squeeze--a clear "goodbye and godspeed," without a syllable spoken.

"Kurt?" Tony breathed.

“Go.” Kurt patted Fen's shoulder, then caressed Jori's long, serpentine neck with a gentle stroke of his tail-tip. “Fast as you can, now. I’ll catch you up.”

“Kurt, no…” Tony protested, half worried for the safety of his new friend, half worried about what the loss of Kurt's steady, resourceful presence would mean for the rest of them.

“This is my 'wheelhouse,' you might say."  Kurt's shoulders rouse and fell in a shrug, perfectly casual, nonchalan even, as if he hadn't a care in the world.  "Swift and silent now, _mein Freund_.”

Tony's teeth and fingernails felt like they might be vibrating loose, thanks to the current version of Hela's song.  “She’s making kind of a sizzling noise now. Sorrow? Zarrow?”

Kurt gave his wrist another a quick squeeze. “Quick as you can, Fenrir!”

The ginormous wolf leaped--in fact Tony could have sworn Fen cleared half the forest in that single bound.  It felt as if he’d left Tony’s stomach behind, maybe somewhere in the vicinity of New Jersey. He ran on until dusk became full night, through all the hours of darkness, until the sun began to rise.

Tony found himself amazed, then, to see the world had turned green again, with grass that rippled softly in the breeze and trees fluttering their fresh, verdant leaves.  Birds sang as they flitted from branch to branch to branch and small creatures rooted in hollows and shadows within the woodland, as if they had nothing to fear in the world.  A stream ran through that place, making happy little chuckling noises as it went.

It all looked so... innocent.  Peaceful and innocent, tempting Tony to put aside all caution.

 _To drink and to hunt?_ Fen growled softly in Tony's head.

 _Um... maybe..._  His thoughts had gone syrupy with exhaustion.

When Fen dropped to his belly beside the narrow stream, Tony nearly tumbled off into the water.  Once he'd recovered his balance, he only just managed to pull Loki off his son's wide back and onto the green-cushioned bank.

 _I hafta..._ Tony thought soupily.  _I should..._

Gods, _so_ tired.  So _tired_.

Lying half on Loki, half on the dampish moss, with Hela curled into a space between them, Tony plummeted into sleep, his last thought, _Would someone shut up those goddamn fucking birds, please?_

  
Tony woke, after a dark, dreamless, unknown time, with a body fitted snugly against his and fingers carding gently through  
his hair. For a long while he just wouldn’t let himself question that touch.  Whatever it might mean--now or in the future--couldn't he just appreciate that closeness, the warmth of it, the way it filled him with sensations--however overly optimistic--of being appreciated, of being cared for, of being at peace?

Tony couldn’t remember the last time he'd felt at peace.

A hand lay over his, covering Tony's hand entirely.

Tony turned his wrist, allowing his fingers to link with the other's fingers.

“Lok?” he breathed.

Maybe (his pessimistic and untrusting mind informed him), you should be questioning exactly why getting up close and personal with the god of lies (not to mention mischief) seemed like such a positive thing—but hey, maybe they’d earned a little of that by this point--a little comfort, a little kindness?

Tony opened his eyes, blinking, trying to see through the gloom. Jesus, it was dark!  No moon or stars, nothing that picked up so much as a glimmer of light.

Come to think of it, he’d have expected to catch at least a flicker of _something_ , if only from Loki or Hela, their fair skins luminous as the moon in the night.

Not to mention--now that Tony thought of it--an occasional flash from the swift-moving water, or the hot smouldering-coal glow of Fen’s eyes as he blinked.

But, no.  He could make out exactly... nothing.

“Loki?” Tony said sharply, pulling away, onto his hands and knees, the moss that had been moist and springy when he lay down now just so much crumbly dust under his palms. In that instant, he knew with absolute certainty that the person who'd lain behind him, the one he’d been so close to when he woke, was some interloper, not Loki at all.

“Lok, if you’re there..." Tony rasped, his voice tight with sudden terror.  "This would be a peachy time to wake the fuck up.”

“Oh, he’s here,” came a voice from the dark., “Poor puny creature, puny god, struggling to rise, struggling to save one he would call friend.”

A hand clamped onto Tony’s wrist, a big, blunt-fingered hand, icy cold, not strong-yet-loving, like Kurt's hand but bruisingly powerful.  Tony didn’t have a snowball's chance in hell of breaking its grip.

“There can be no friend for you, Son of No One,” the voice spat, “God Unworshipped, Unloved God of Lies, thrown out like yesterday’s rubbish again and again.”

“Look, I don’t know who you are, asshole--"  Tony tried to jerk his arm away, snapping hard and fast against that unyielding hold, hoping against hope to catch his captor off guard, to use his own weight against him, to make him faceplant into the dusty ground--naturally, the move did no good.  A snowball's chance, and all that.

God, what he would have given in that moment for a suit, even one of the early models, wonky and unreliable.

Still fighting, his muscles straining until it felt like his delts and biceps might, at any moment, simply explode, Tony managed to get his legs under him.  He might have lurched to his feet without a shred of agility or grace, but at least he was up.

He felt less helpless standing.  If he'd been able to see a single damn thing, he might have sussed out a way to help his own cause.  Maybe he might even have been able to pull loose. He hoped his continued tugging at least inconvenienced the bastard.

Was this shit magic?  Tony _knew_ it had to be magic.  He knew it!

He hated magic.

“Who I am?” his captor sing-songed, just before a burst of nails-on-a-chalkboard laughter came out the dark. “I am known both young and old, Some cower from me, others I make bold, but I'm not one you mock or taunt, For your every step I haunt. Do you know me now?”

"You sound like a fucking cell phone commercial," Tony spat back. He found himself hunching, his body instinctively trying to make itself a smaller target for attack.

“The answer to that particular riddle is not _your_ name,” a second voice emerged from the dark, a voice that couldn't possibly belong to anyone but Loki--no one else in the entire Nine Realms could achieve quite that tone of snotty disdain.

A small hiss sounded, then a ball of green light flamed into being, spinning in slow brilliance just above the palm of Loki’s hand.

Immediately the moon, stars, sky and river returned, and with them came the ordinary noises of the night. The intruder showed clearly in that intense, grass-green light—a tallish guy, heavily-muscled, coarse, wavy black hair thick on his head and bare arms.

He also had what could only be described—and this was putting it mildly--as crazyeyes. The man might have been fairly good-looking otherwise, but those crazyeyes were deal-breakers on a major scale. That and (minus the face plate and armor) he dressed just like Victor von Doom.

“You are neither _my_ death,” Loki purred condescendingly, “ _Nor_ the death of my friends. Although…” He prowled the edges of that space, doing his panther-walk, looking like he owned the world.

 _Loki, you sexy fuck_ , Tony thought, because the god may still have been bone-thin and shaky, but he was workin’ the room.

“Oh, I see.  This _is_ interesting,” Loki purred on. “You have dwelt in Helheimr, yet come out again. But such a thing as you never cheated death… I would guess, rather, that you were freed by no agency of your own. Did sweet Cousin Hel owe a favour to one unknown? I can scarcely believe such a thing to be. In elder days she kept her books so evenly.”

 _“The one who brings grief past Ironwood lies_ ,” the stranger spat.

 _Calling home the brood he sired, with Fenrir_  
_Amongst them in monster's guise_  
_Who is soon to steal the sun from the sky._  
_There feeds he full on the flesh of the dead,_  
_With brother and sister full terrible_  
_The home of the gods he destroys_  
_Then one realm then another reddened with gore._  
_Dark grow all suns, still all breaths_  
_And in summer soon the thunderstorms fail._

Would you know more?  
_Er ég ekki dauða?_  
Am I not death?

“I will _never_ allow you,” Loki snapped, in the haughtiest possible way. “Or your master, for that matter—for I presume it is he from whom you come, creature, from my never–brother Baldr—to use my sweet children in such a manner. I will call upon anything, loose anything, _lose_ anything, to preserve them. Baldr knew of old how deeply I studied in my youth; now he cannot calculate the breadth of my learning.”

 _Way to display that humbleness, Lok_ , Tony thought.

In an instant Loki was beside them, his long fragile-looking fingers digging into the stranger’s throat.

“Ah, now I know the meaning of my daughter’s song," he hissed into the intruder's face.  "Not 'sorrow,' but _Szardos_ I name you. Is this best use you could make of your second life, dead man?”

He reached down, almost casually, to the hand locked around Tony’s arm, ripping the hold away. A small twist and wrist bones splintered, protruding through the Szardos's skin.

Loki made a slight gesture with his head; Tony moved away, rubbing his own bruised wrist gingerly.

Blood pooled where Loki’s fingers bit into Szardos’s neck, then began to flow freely. “Do you find me such a puny thing now? Such an object of derision?”

Slowly, Szardos was being forced to his knees.

“I will give you leave to return to your masters, creature, provided you tell them this: say ' _Loki of No Realm defies all auguries. I will not be bounded or controlled, but I shall seek back my vengeance for all wrongs committed upon my body. Once and only once was I caught sleeping; I will not be caught so again.'”_

Szardos forced a laugh through his clenched teeth. “Oh, puny god indeed, you know not _what_ was done to you. Do you think it begins and ends with your monstrous get?”

This time Loki threw him a superhumanly supercilious look. He shrugged, every line of his body expressing that he literally could not care less.  Zero fucks given. Less than zero, were such a thing possible. “It matters not, creature. I find now that I tire of your presence.”

The god tossed Szardos to one side with about the same level of effort Tony might have spent disposing of a used Kleenex, a green portal appearing to swallow the man's body before closing in on itself.

Tony watched Loki’s face as the sky began to lighten behind him. Slowly, the ball of green fire went out, and Loki’s hands closed into fists, as bruised and battered as they’d ever been. The god trembled violently, thin shoulders slumped.

The green place where they’d slept lay utterly desolate: moss, grass, plants, leaves, dried to bleached powder, the birds and frogs and whatever, that had been so noisy when they bedded down, silenced altogether.

Tony knew then what had happened, or thought he did—unable to eat, Loki, vampirelike, had drained life from the world around him.  Tony wasn’t sure whether to be terrified or impressed.

At that exact moment Loki collapsed, his long, thin body folding in what seemed like impossible ways, dust puffing up around him as his butt hit the ground.  Slowly, awkwardly, as if he barely had the strength for even such a simple movement, he pulled his knees up to his chest, his head dropping to rest on them. It didn't look comfortable.

“It’s okay, kids,” Tony said, “Come on out now.”

All three reappeared out of a shimmering fold in the air: Fen had shrunk down to his small self, Jӧri and Hela hovered, nervously flitting back and forth through the same few inches of air. It stood to reason, Tony thought, that Loki would have thought of them first, protected them first. Wherever he'd stashed them, Tony knew the kids had been safe.

The children settled down around their _Pabbi_ , cuddling in, their individual songs weaving a pattern around and between the four of them so strong even Tony could glimpse its color and brightness.

A tendril of that song-spun light reached out, calling him, welcoming him. Tony squatted by Loki’s side, rubbing the god's bony shoulders.

“Nice proof of your ongoing badassery there, Lok. But letting me go snugglies with the bad guy? So not cool.”

“I understand so little of what you say,” Loki commented, almost wistfully. “Do you think I ever shall? Do you think I might make a place for myself in Midgard, given time?”

Tony lowered himself all the way down to the desiccated ground, resting his head against Loki’s arm. The god felt tense, shivery, stressed, the muscles knotted and twitchy.

“Is that what you want, Loki? To be human?”

“I cannot be human,” Loki answered. “I cannot be anything merely by wishing. Neither a prince of Asgard nor a prince of Jӧtunnheimr. Not a human of Midgard. Nothing. Had only the darkness awaited me when I fell from the Bifrost…”

Tony put his arms around the god and pulled him close, his own skin tingling slightly as the children's song-pattern spread to include him. Loki still smelled of snow, pine, cloves, but some stronger spice as well, which he guessed was the smell of magic. Loki gave a little sound of protest, one that lasted about two seconds before he surrendered and leaned into Tony completely.

“None of this ‘had only the darkness’ shit, Mister," Tony told him. "I’ve been in that place and I know it’s not good, but you’re not alone. You have great kids. You have Kurt.”

He thought of how he’d felt waking up, that sensation of perfectly relaxed closeness, something he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt, even with Pepper, which was the closest he'd ever come to love.

Tony might be a scientist, an engineer, but he was also a great believer in following his gut.

As much wrong as he’d felt pouring off Szardos, was the amount of right he felt for Loki.

“Cover your eyes, kids,” he laughed, “I’m goin’ in.”

Loki’s lips felt like velvet, his mouth tasted of fire and snow, his tongue truly was quick and slippery as silver. More fire lived in the depths of his eyes.

“You know, Lok--you have me, too,” Tony said, some time later, as he wrapped up Loki’s hand in his own.

"That is," he added, "That is... um... if you’ll take me in return?”


	7. Travels from Place to Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief jaunt back in time to find out what was happening with Kurt during the previous chapter, with insight into his relationship with his foster-brother, Stefan Szardos. Loki's children are... individuals... when it comes to growing. Meanwhile, it's off to Doomstadt to catch up with the Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> M. C. (Maurits Cornelis) Escher (1898 - 1972) was a graphic artists from the Netherlands still known for his mathematics-inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. The Goblin King's impossible staircase in the movie _Labyrith_ was inspired by his work.
> 
> _ad infinitum_ =again and again in the same way forever (Latin)
> 
> "Scott" is Scott Summers (Cyclops), who led the second team of Uncanny X-Men when Professor X rescued Kurt from a pitchfork-wielding mob and made him part of the team. At first Kurt, one of the younger members of the X-Men, utterly respected and even idolized his captain. Later, relations between them between them became... strained. Scott did show up for Kurt's Welcome Back from Being Dead Party, though.
> 
> Doomstadt is the capitol city of Victor von Doom's realm, Latveria.
> 
> Glass-half-full people are optimists, glass-half-empty people are pessimists
> 
> A spork is that odd little eating utensil that combines a spoon and a fork (hence the name). They usually look much like a spoon, only with a little zig-zag of pointy bits to serve as tines on the business end.
> 
> _ó, bróðir minn, fátækur ungur bróðir minn_ =oh my brother, my poor young brother (Icelandic)

* * *

Kurt?

Loki’s voice made only the softest ripple in his mind, something Kurt recognized as a deliberate act of gentleness. He'd brought with him such a reputation for selfishness, trickery and violence--and yet always seemed to take pains not to overwhelm others with his sendings, and showed such tender concern for his children.

_We are all of us contradictions_ , Kurt reminded himself.  _We each have angels and devils seated on our shoulders._

An instant later he felt the sensation, truly, of having an otherworldly being on his shoulder, the sense that Loki had moved him slightly aside, that he now occupied the space just behind him, that Loki's too-warm cheek had brushed Kurt's own, though physically, there was no one there at all. His tail kept twitching in response to the solidity of the perceived presence, wanting to coil around Loki’s waist, to anchor him in their perch and keep him safe.

Kurt had to wonder if Loki even realized how much of his actual self—of his need--leaked through into Kurt’s psyche. He caught bits and snippets of memory from Loki that must have gone back a thousand years, if not more, and an intelligence that was not so much alien as it was infinitely layered and whorled--an M.C. Escher drawing of a brain, where the hands sketched themselves and the staircases curled back to where they began. He couldn’t help but wonder what such a mind might have felt like to an entirely human brain, even to the brain of a genius like Tony Stark.

Kurt would not claim to be any sort of genius, but neither would he claim to be entirely human. Perhaps that qualified him to understand Loki in some way that another might not. He certainly understood that beneath the millennium of memory and the prodigious intelligence lay the mind of a terrified nineteen-year-old drowning in guilt and shame, grief and self-loathing, betrayal and pain.

_Does Tony even guess at these things_ , Kurt wondered, _As he begins to experience feelings for Loki?_

Kurt honestly didn’t know what he ought to do with the situation, if anything. He wished only happiness for both men, yet he lacked the insight into Tony's character that he'd found during his excursions through Loki mind.  He could only rely on what he'd heard and what he'd seen, and the things he'd heard and seen both convinced him that, beneath the snark and quick anger and Tony's clearly mercurial nature, Tony Stark was, in fact, a good man, even a hero.

He only worried that Loki and Tony, so alike in many ways, and yet so dissimilar, might self-destruct all over one another.

But who was he, to judge any other living being?

_You think of me?_ Loki asked inside Kurt's head, sounding uncertain.

Kurt sent him no words in return, only a gentle flow of love and confidence, the sort of caring most beings received as infants, cradled in the arms of those who loved them. He felt Loki drink it in, starved for the sort of affection that expected nothing, that asked nothing in return--the kind of affection Loki, it seemed clear to him, had only rarely been given in life, and no longer expected.

_At least I had the circus for my family_ , Gott sei dank , Kurt thought, _And then the X-Men._

He experienced a sensation of Loki sinking deeply into his furry skin, warming himself in the glow of Kurt’s affection as they two shared one mind.

_Lend me your eyes now, little brother?_   Kurt sent--because Loki, within the confines of that overheated little cell had in some strange way become his brother. Out of all those he'd cared for, past and present, it was Loki to whom he'd drawn closest.

_My brother for now and ever_ , he thought, and the words felt solemn as a vow inside Kurt's head.

_Look_ , Loki told him.  Even in his weakened state--and Kurt could tell that Loki had begun to fail badly, that this contact, and even his hold on consciousness, used up nearly all he had to give--Loki’s eyes made out details in the dark that even Kurt (who saw equally well in full day or absolute darkness) could never have seen, with colors, and shadings of colors, he'd have never imagined.

Even then, it wasn’t easy to make out the form of the burly man who waited below in the dark—only his black, waving hair, his green-clad shoulders. The foreshortened shape of him, dressed head to chest in pewter-colored armor, blended into the backdrop of the bushes and trees, and shadows made his face invisible.

Kurt, however, knew this man's features exactly.

_Oh, Stefan_ , he grieved--a real grief, for he'd truly loved this man, the brother of his childhood. _If only you'd remained dead._

The thought, _Or I had_ , followed a moment later.

Kurt rejected that thought as foolish. He hadn't spent all his time in Heaven regretting work left undone, only to falter when things got a little difficult.  No more had he surrendered his immortal soul to regret one single minute spent here on this earth.

Kurt realized he was weeping, and for a few moments only allowed himself to mourn.

_Kurt?_ Loki called to him, and the sensation of an embrace followed, both real and unreal. _Kurt, my beloved friend?_

_He was my brother_ , Kurt thought, though he hadn't meant to burden Loki with his grief, _And he did such terrible things…_

Loki wondered, in turn, _Did Thor, my brother, weep so over me?_

Kurt tried to keep the image of the dead children, the children Stefan murdered, in sacrifice to who-knew-what dark power, out of his thoughts, but he couldn’t, not even after all his years of training with Professor X, certainly not well enough to hide the picture from Loki, who rarely failed to be perceptive.

An image washed back over him: the dead of New York after the Chitauri attack, a towering, inconsolable guilt that chased and chased and chased its own tail, cutting razor trails through Loki’s head.

_If only… if only… if only…_

_Loki,_ Kurt called to him. _Loki, you can’t think that._

_If I had not wanted to be a king, they would not have followed that path into my mind. I presented my weakness to them for their wanton exploitation._

_(To be TAKEN yet again_ ) came through almost imperceptibly.

_To whom, Loki?_

_Thanos. Other._

_(Baldr)_

_YOUR BIRTHRIGHT WAS TO DIE._

Dear _Gott im Himmel_ , could Loki’s father honestly have said such a heartless thing to him?

As an answer, Loki showed Kurt pictures taken from his own mind, days after the battle ended, images of him and Logan and Kitty, along with many other teams of volunteers, forcing their way room by room, tunnel by tunnel, twisted wreckage by collapsed space, through dozens of destroyed skyscrapers, combing through foot by foot in search of the trapped, the injured, the slain.

One of the spaces they’d cleared had housed a daycare.

_Such a fool I am,_ Loki told him, now so softly Kurt had to focus every fiber of his attention to catch the whisper _. Who had thought to have done my best!  Such an prideful, mistaken fool._

Then, _I have no best. I have nothing of worth to offer anyone._

_My birthright was to die._

Loki vanished as suddenly as he’d appeared, and when Kurt reached out after him, he felt nothing.

Laughter came from below, a laugh he remembered well, rich and warm, stirring in Kurt memories of his carefree boyhood, cloud-watching on the riverbank with Stefan and Jimaine, his foster-sister.

Kurt found he was weeping again. The last memories he had of his brother were awful, but they’d been finite. They’d had an end. Why did they need to go on and on now,  _ad infinitum_?

Dizzy with anger and confusion, Kurt dropped, entirely forgetting about his injured foot. Like the life of a dancer, that of an acrobat was essentially a movement from minute to hour to day of one pain after another, the life of an X-Man scarcely different, but this pain was exquisite in its awfulness, raw ends of bone and nerve grinding into wood and soil. He collapsed, the air leaked out of him in a small, agonized hiss, and he lay on his back on the turf, powerless for the moment to move, helpless tears streaming down from his eyes.

“My poor brother. What have you done to yourself?” Stefan removed his cloak, folding it into a pad that he slid beneath Kurt’s leg. He lay down beside Kurt on the forest floor, stroking Kurt’s cheek with his large, rough fingers, stretching closer to kiss his brow. “I don’t know how, Kurt, but I had somehow forgotten how absolutely perfect you are. Whatever happens, I won’t let the others kill you. You’d be safe from Victor anyway if you just talk a little Roma to him and charm him, as I know you're quite able.”

He stroked back Kurt’s curly hair. “Victor will like you very much. I think I’ll let him keep you.”

Kurt forced himself to summon his strength, to sit up, to meet Stefan’s eyes. They were empty, their pupils silvery.

_Why?_ he was about to ask, but Stefan interrupted him with a finger to his lips and a wry smile.

“Because I can,” he breathed in Kurt’s ear, and vanished in a puff of fire and brimstone, taking from Kurt as he'd always taken from him.

Kurt huddled on the ground with his leg throbbing and spasming, and thought about how he’d meant to help Loki and Tony by heading his brother off at the pass, but hadn’t even managed to slow  Stefan down. All he’d really managed to do was upset poor Loki horribly and give his once-brother a nice opportunity for a supervillain gloat—and Kurt had heard more than enough of those over the years to last him the rest of his life.

_“Ach du Lieber,_ Nightcrawler!” Kurt chided himself aloud as he pulled himself up on a tree.  "What would Logan have to say?  Not much in your favor, I believe."

He didn’t know the first thing about healing--about magical healing, at least, rather than that of bandages and medicines--but he could draw from the vast, nearly untapped reservoir of magic within him to deaden the pain, as he’d done a number of times before this day, and once that not-quite-spell had been accomplished, he found his foot would hold his weight steadily enough.

_You are not much of a hero, are you?_ he informed himself (and that the voice inside his head sounded more like Scott's than his own broke Kurt's heart a little). _You will have to do better. Much better than this_.

Kurt stood for a moment, letting his body center, feeling the balance of it, ever reliable, feeling the weight of the Neyaphem power, his to draw on whenever he would, though a small, niggling voice within cautioned, _Danger, Kurt, danger!_

_Just for now_ , he told himself, _Just for this little time, until it all is over and done with. Then no more._

Kurt crossed his arms over his chest, formed a perfect picture in his head of a quite specific spot in the dungeons under Castle Doom--a cell where he had once spent a number of unpleasant hours imprisoned with his team--and leaped.

So far, so far, further than he’d ever jumped before.

It was absolute agony.  It was absolute exhilaration.

Kurt hit the ground, rolling, amidst a world of gray stone.

* * *

The fourth time the boys complained about being hungry, Tony decided it had to be time to declare a lunchbreak. He was the only thing holding Loki on Fen’s back anyway.

He slid down first, letting Loki slump off against him, and staggered, half-dragging half-carrying the god, until he could prop Loki's mostly-limp form against a good-sized oak tree.

Hela drifted down gracefully, alighting by Loki’s side. She'd now grown to about the size of a one-year-old, as best Tony could determine (children and their relative sizes at particular ages not being exactly his area of expertise), but possessing totally different proportions—like a child version of Loki, with long arms, long legs, a long slender neck. Even the fingers on her tiny hands were long, pale and expressive. Her hair now hung in beautiful jet-black corkscrew ringlets down to her shoulders.

If Hela had decided to spontaneously pop out a pair of fairy wings, Tony would have been in no way surprised.

“You’re silly, Uncle Tony,” Hela told him, covering her ladylike giggles with her hands.

That had been the other thing: she’d suddenly started talking aloud, in complete sentences. Her brothers, Fen and Jӧri, when they deigned to remain in human form for more than five seconds at a time, had also both made it to well-articulated words and phrases. They'd grown to the size of four-year-olds.

_Back soon!_   Jӧri sent cheerfully as he twisted his emerald-scaled body into an infinity sign in the air. Fenrir made himself smaller, the better to skulk through the brush. Tony wasn’t sure if magic, speed or camouflage gave them the ability, but just like that they disappeared. Invisibly. Soundlessly.  As if they'd never been.

Tony took a seat next to Loki between the roots of the oak, Hela settling herself on his thigh, which fell at convenient bench-height, given her size. “Hey, Lok. How's it going?"

"Fantastic," the god hissed between clenched teeth.

"Ya know what? After all the rare to medium-rare meals of either Thumper or Bambi's mother, I am forming a real appreciation for salad. Crunchy, crunchy green salad. And fruit! Wouldn’t some fruit taste good?” He was making himself salivate. “Condiments. Love me some condiments!”

“Speak another word, Stark…” Loki nearly growled, though in a sad, weak kind of way. He was clammy and sweating, the tight-locked muscles in his jaw jumping. "Also, you are nonsensical."

Hela, no fool, immediately withdrew to a safer distance.

_Why must you mock me? I had thought._.. Loki cried inside his head--words Tony strongly suspected the god hadn't meant him to hear.

“Oh, God, no!" Tony answered, with a genuine sense of shame.  "I honestly wasn’t trying to torture you.  Ask anyone.  Ask Bruce. I’m incapable of thinking before I speak. I possess no filter. Literally. None.”

After a moment (and with some hesitation--the last thing he wanted was to hurt Loki any more than absolutely necessary), Tony wrapped an arm around the god's shoulders, easing him down until Loki's head lay in his lap, all sweat and blood and tangled hair.

All that, and Tony still found him beautiful.

“Can't you suck some chlorophyll out of the environment or something? Whatever it was you did before? Would that make you feel better?”

_I will do as best I can, Tony._   Loki's interior voice, this time, was gentle.

“I know, babe. I know.” Tony rubbed the pad of his thumb in circles on Loki’s temple. Loki gave an almost-inaudible sigh of contentment.

Crap! Babe? Where did _that_ come from?

Overhead, a few of the leaves went from green to yellow. The grass around them began to look slightly dry.

_That all you got?_ Tony thought, but didn't say anything.  Loki, as he'd promised, had done the best he could.

“We need to finish this very soon, Tony,” he said.

“We will,” Tony assured him. “Swear to god.  To the gods, if you'd rather.”

"No use," Loki answered.  "The gods, as we both know, are... puny beings."

There might have been a joke in there somewhere, Tony guessed, but if so, he found it heartbreaking/  Maybe it was the little pause that gave the statement such an extra twist of self-loathing.

"Is there really such a place as Castle Doom?” Loki asked--to change the subject, Tony suspected.

“Pretty dumb name, huh? Believe it or not, yes, there is. In Doomstadt. Why do you ask?”

“Because that is where Kurt has gone, and…” Loki struggled upright, looking as if he was trying to listen to something both miles distant and life-or-death important.

“Oh, Kurt, not that...” he breathed, and winked out of existence.

* * *

The inhibitor collar, Natasha decided (since, despite the reputation for pessimism that clung to her Russian heritage, she liked to think of herself as a glass-half-full kind of person) had its up side and its down side. The up side being, despite the giant prong stuck straight into her brain stem, her heart still beat and she continued to breathe.

Not so good? Being issued plastic spoons at mealtimes because she'd been thrown into a state of such monumental clumsiness that she probably would have put her own eye out if she'd been trusted with something so dangerous as a spork.

At least she wasn’t as bad off as Clint, who had plastic spoons, a broken jaw, and gruel. For the rest of them, the food they'd been served was, surprisingly, not bad.  Gruel, on the other hand, looked disgusting and smelled, if anything, worse.

Then there was Thor, who'd not only been separated from his pet hammer, but seemed to be more than passingly familiar to Jailer #2, the blond brute who'd shot each of them with his strange, sparkly weapon, on the helicarrier that Natasha had begun to realize probably hadn't been the helicarrier.

The blond man also, it had to be said, bore more than a passing resemblance to their own thunder god--the same, or even greater height, the same luxurious golden locks, the same general appearance of fitness and handsomeness to a degree that defied belief.  Unlike Thor's easy-going and pleasant demeanor, though... Natasha didn't know exactly how to describe the feeling he gave her.

_Like the first time I walked into the Red Room_ , was the closest she could (or wanted) to get.

He "skeeved her out," Clint might have said.  Like Budapest, when she knew, just knew, _They_ had come close, when _They_ would have killed her and Clint both, except...

Clint didn't remember the red-haired woman and the dreadlocked girl dropping in out of absolutely frickin' nowhere--most likely he'd already been comatose--but Natasha did. They'd skeeved her out too.  Natasha had never seen two people so completely dead-eyed without actually being dead.

Their blond captor reminded Natasha of that pair, only times infinity.  He looked emptied out of anything that made a person good, or made life worth living.  If her ledger, and Clint's ledger, were marked with red, this man's was soaked in it. 

He kept visiting Thor's cell, and during those visits the front of that cell blanked out entirely, so that the rest of them saw and heard nothing, and now Thor, their sunny-natured fearless warrior, was facing one corner of his cell, chanting something that sounded Nordic and depressing, and crying out, now and then, “ó, bróðir minn, fátækur ungur bróðir minn!”

Natasha had no idea what those words meant, only that they sounded anguished.  She wanted--if only to make herself feel better--to accuse Thor of being overly dramatic, to tell him to knock it off, he was hurting morale, but she didn't have it in her. Thor's pain seemed too real, and too immediate.

Thor refused to talk about what was happening.

Their extreme clumsiness now made guards unnecessary, and their cells remained unlocked through what Natasha guessed were the daylight hours, though with the dungeons far underground (also a guess) and devoid of windows, she really had no idea.  Natasha assumed they were subject to visual surveillance, the Three Stooges comedy that had become their lives under constant review.  For all she knew, their observers served popcorn. Surely it looked hilarious, watching the once-mighty Avengers stumble and trip and drop everything they touched, but for her team it was exhausting, and humiliating, and Natasha wanted it to end yesterday.

Before yesterday would be even better. Preferably in a way that involved the kicking of asses and the taking of names.

 

Natasha was lying on her bunk, contemplating the sweet, sweet satisfaction of exactly that, playing big spoon to poor Clint’s little spoon, when the god of mischief and lies dropped from the ceiling of her cell.

Both she and Clint jerked upright in a way that under normal circumstances would have led to both being poised and ready for action, only in this case it ended up with Natasha three meters from the cot, her butt in one of the pools of condensation that puddled the damp, uneven stone floor.  Clint had landed flat on his back halfway under the bed and halfway draped over Loki, pain raw in his eyes as he flailed madly to get away.

“Get him off me!” Clint shouted in his new, muddled clenched-toothed voice, panicked and hyperventilating. “Get him off me! Thor, come get your goddamn motherfucking brother!”

He screamed when Loki’s fingers curled around his ankle, then again as the first scream tore his mouth open wide, fighting in his  uncoordinated way to kick in the god's teeth, maybe even nailing him a time or two.

Clint might have screamed a third time, but Loki's fingers--to Natasha's eyes they looked three times the length of normal fingers and skinny as bones--had clamped over her partner's face.

“Archer. Barton,” Loki said, in a harsh whisper of a voice. “Barton, calm yourself.  You jaw is healed, and I am not on you, but you have fallen on me.”

Other then the scary voice, it struck Natasha, that the god of lies sounded perfectly reasonable, even... (and this confused her) ...kind?

“On the lives of my children," Loki gasped, "I mean you no harm.”

Clint, who motion normally flowed through easily and naturally, fluid as water, struggled to roll off him, fighting even harder to sit upright, until his back, inhibitor still firmly attached, was propped against the bunk.   He glared at Loki, pure murder in his eyes, even though, thanks to the implant, those eyes kept drifting out of true.

Loki, now upright himself, gazed back at him, the corners of his mouth turned down and a peculiar expression in his violently bloodshot eyes.  More blood dripped from his aristocratic nose.

“I mean you no harm,” Loki repeated. His tongue darted out to moisten his lips.  Natasha prepared herself for something, anything.

Slowly and apparently painfully, Loki shifted to his knees, right hand pressed to his chest. “I kneel before you to say, with the whole of my heart, that I am sorry for what was done to you.”

His hand moved toward Clint’s chest, toward Clint’s heart, and though the archer gave a little shudder he didn't jerk away, even when green fire danced briefly over Loki’s skin.

“It was a violation, I understand that now, and know my actions caused great distress to you. I say a second time, that I am most heartily sorry to have caused you anguish.”

Natasha wondered if Loki had ever said “sorry” before in his life. If not, he’d made a decent enough beginning. At least he managed to sound sincere.

Loki's fingers flashed through a series of little green-fiery gestures.  One by one, the inhibitors detached from their necks and fell, shattering to pieces on the stone floor.

“I believe the vernacular is ‘oops?’” Loki said.

Natasha found it had to believe, but she'd nearly forgotten how much it kicked ass to be her--and to be free.

 

 

Just because... a few pictures! 

_Our heroes:_

_[A young Roma Kurt](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/26/c6/31/26c631c924493f1a07ff95e14f0eb6e6.jpg)  [My personal favorite Kurt pic](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/463870830361765802/)  [A Loki I love](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/817544138579509122/)  [Loki with Helmet](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/432627107947913860/)  [Tony the Magician](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/397724210818614570/)_

  _The Kids_

_[Loki and The Lokettes](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/407575835011341630/)_    _[A sweet drawing](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/556264991469051686/)  [Parenthood](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/521221356843739902/)_

  _The Team:_

_[Steve](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/403353710368088264/)  _ _[Damn, Thor! (mildly NSFW)](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/580612576931731471/)  _ _[Natasha](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AQAFOAcYsnY4IwJlWLdT3ex-Itd0v2ze9G8bMFYfcftnIiA3YbxGK_Q/)  _ _[Clint](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/512284526340049443/)  _ _[Bruce](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/355643701800664143/) _

  _Villains, anyone?_

_[Victor von Doom](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/358951032776552899/)  _ _[Szardos](https://comicvine.gamespot.com/stefan-szardos/4005-45358/)  _ _[Baldr "the Brave"](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/90072061272136689/) _


	8. Magic is Green... Magic Sucks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers are free (more or less) and all Loki wants is to find his brother. Unfortunately, Castle Doom is full of one of the nastiest uses of magic he has ever encountered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is taken from the two tag lines of Matt Wagner's _Mage: The Hero Discovered_ , one of my all-time favorite comics.
> 
> The word hagridden was first used in the mid-17th century (circa 1655-1665), and meant then pretty much what it means now--that to be hagridden is to feel as tormented as if you literally had a witch riding on your back to goad you. As a point of interest, "Hagrid" is an archaic form of the same word. 
> 
> _fjandinn_ =damn (this seems to be a bit of a general-purpose Icelandic curse-word, since other sources translate it as "hell" or "fucking." Input from anyone with with superior language skills would be, as always, greatly appreciated.
> 
>  _Manstu, kæri Kapteinn_ =Remember, dear Captain? As usual, as the modern language closest to old Norse, Icelandic is filling in for the language of the _Aesir_. When he says, _Þú hélt tunglið höfðu gjöreytt hjarta mitt?_ Loki is basically delerium-babbling to Steve, "Do you remember, dear Captain? I had a moon in my heart." Poor Loki.
> 
> Myrddin is pronounced "Mirthin," more or less. Loki knows him as Myrddin Wyllt and we'll see more of him as the series progresses, though probably not so much in  
> " _Eastward_." He is definitely not an OC, except, perhaps, in the way I portray him.
> 
> " _Fy anwylyd_ " is one way to say "my darling" in Welsh.
> 
>  _"Diavol! Fiul răului!"_ ="Devil! Son of evil!" The lovely Romanian language is filling in for the national tongue of Latveria.
> 
> As clever readers have guessed, Baldr has been _seriously_ been putting the ol' magical whammy on poor Thor, and his teammates are now suffering the effects, hence some odd behavior. I imagine Natasha is somewhat immune because she is Made of Awesome... er... a trained agent.

* * *

Loki rejoiced that he had left his children safe in Tony’s care, their senses slightly muddled so that they would not find their way easily back to him. No need for his dear ones ever to return to this terrible place, where their lives so coldly and unnaturally began. Better they wander some short while in the relative safety of the wilderness, guarded by he who was nearly a friend, and who cared for them.

In the end, Tony _would_ have come to hate him, Loki told himself, just as nearly all he once cared for had either died or come to consider him one they despised.  He was, after all, a monster, easily despisable. Tony would not, however, he felt certain, either abandon or come to despise the children.

Odd as they might be by Midgardian standards, Tony would never hate them.  Tony was, after all, a little odd himself.

For all that, Tony was a good man, in the heart of his heart.  He would not...

Better they wander…

Better Tony…

Loki pressed his fingers to his temples, hoping to marshal and contain his thoughts, his senses pushed to their furthest limit, scanning constantly for threats, the hatred and suspicion of these so-called Avengers jangling his every nerve. Why must they think so _fjandinn_ loudly?

And, by the Nine, why must he bleed again?

Only a little, though, this time. Only an inconvenience, and not a threat. Not something to particularly speed his final journey to the Dismal Lands, though Loki knew every step he took bore him onward to that destination.

He raised his hand, absently wiping the blood away from his nose.  As signs of impending death went, Loki found excessive bleeding boring and obvious--and, anyway, he ought not to show such signs of weakness.

He must not... Must not show this weakness...

The grey dungeon cell performed a slow, sickening spin around him. Loki reached out, as if to steady himself on something, anything, but there was nothing near to support him.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked the ginger-haired woman, the one he had once spoken to in such an uncouth manner, hoping to bait her into anger, and for anger to draw forth her weakness.

Only she possessed no weakness Loki could discover, even if she had misinterpreted somewhat his need for the great green monster known to them as "Hulk." Wrath, if she felt it in any particular, only brightened and sharpened her resolve.

The voices of the others, and his own thoughts, buzzed in Loki's head like bees, and in that instant, borne to him on the noise of those nonexistent bees, he could see himself—so young then, oh, so terribly young!--with Narfi balanced on his hip, holding his little son tight as he dripped a bit of new honeycomb into his small, upturned, eager mouth, Vali running circles round and round them on the meadowgrass, calling out, “ _Pabbi, Pabbi_ , some for me too!”

Can laughter really have come so easily to him then, even with all that took place before?

Loki supposed it had. He remembered well enough laughing like a mad creature with his two sweet boys.

“Please, I cannot see them now, not this time,” he pleaded. “Not until all is ended.”

“Losing it,” a male voice said, succinctly. The archer? The captain? The sad, angry man hagridden by his green beast? Loki could not  
tell.

“C’mon, Loki. Have a seat over here.” This voice, he knew, was in truth the voice of Captain America (he Loki had once mocked and impersonated in his brother's hearing), the Captain, as ever, sounded kind but authoritative. He took Loki’s arm--though Loki had to steel himself not to tear away from the touch—and lowered him to sit upon a hard bench much like the metal shelf in his old cell.

Loki found it of no surprise that the Captain did not remember him, he looked so different now, but they had known one another quite well for four terrible days in the Second War of All Midgard. The thought of that war, and his Midgardian life in that time, made him want to weep again—and then Loki found he was indeed weeping.

For Myrddin, his beloved of nearly a millennia, now gone. For their son, taken so soon...

Why must everything, everything precious be lost?

Loki despised himself for this weakness, this self-pity. _Where is your strength, Prince of Asgard?_ he raged at himself _.  Where is the strength of your bitterness and your rage and your wanting? Will you truly allow the corrupt magic of this place to so erode it?_

" _Manstu, kæri Kapteinn?_ ” he asked Rogers, scarcely knowing what he said by this time. He fumbled for the Captain's hand, pressing the palm hard against his chest. He felt such need, in that moment, for a trace of fellow feeling, and Rogers had been his Shield-Brother once, even if he could not remember. “ _Þú hélt tunglið höfðu gjöreytt hjarta mitt?_ ”

Loki realized, somewhere in his jumbled head, that he had lost control of the Allspeak and addressed Rogers in the tongue of the _Æsir_ , which could have no meaning for him whatsoever.

“There was a moon in my heart,” he tried again, for he knew English well, having spoken the tongue for centuries, in many of its myriad forms.  Only why should that statement be any more meaningful, despite being quite near to words the Captain himself had spoken, as they lay upon the riverbank, in the shadows of the bombed-out bridge?

“I don’t dare move you, Captain Friggason,” Rogers had whispered in the darkness, as a hot, red pain roared in Loki’s ears.

Loki could not even remember why he had been so angry at Odin as to have chosen that name for his sojurn--the usual reasons, he supposed. What Tony would doubtless call his sometime-father’s natural asshatery.

He found "asshatery" an extremely amusing word.

“There’s shrapnel almost touching your heart, a crescent moon nearly big as my hand,” Rogers had told him. “But I’ll stay with you, buddy. You can count on our boys to bring back help.”

Help never arrived, as Loki had known it never would. This was a wasteland, perhaps an offshoot of the Dismal Lands themselves, aid an eternity away, and the “boys” he’d jumped in to free from the corrupt Men of the North known as "Nazis" would soon be lying dead in bomb craters, or face down in runnels of mud. If it had not been so, others would have been sent originally to free them from this benighted land, and not Loki himself.

His masters of those years liked to save him for the most special of occasions.

This time he had wasted their efforts, and his own, by being so foolish as to allow himself to become wounded. He had lain with his head in Rogers’s lap, listening to the Captain’s tales of America, of becoming the Super Soldier, dreaming now and then of Myrddin and their life together in Oxford, often missing, oddly enough, his mother and his brother.

He could not remember what lies he had told Captain Rogers of himself, or what Midgard-acceptable version of the truth. Loki remembered, though, that he had liked the man, because of, not in spite of his purity.  Liked him enough that, in the end, he had counterfeited his own death to drive the dear, valorous, foolish man away. It was the only way to be save him.

On that day, Steven Rogers, Super Soldier, Captain of the Republic of United States, had gathered up the supposed body of Captain L. Friggason, RAF, in his powerful arms and wept.

Loki had been touched. He truly had. He’d nearly taken Myrddin’s suggestion and looked Rogers up after the war, not as the sublime piece of mischief his lover suggested, but because the bit of his heart touched by the moon still hurt him, and he wanted to think of his good Captain happy and well, perhaps betrothed to the pretty Peggy he had spoken of with such fondness, though he had, clearly and impossibly, given the whole of his true heart to some one else entirely.

But all came to ice and fire in the end, as was ever the way. Advised of the news, Loki went down to the Thameside on that stormy November night and screamed out his rage. When Myrddin found him later he was kicking despondently at the rafts of dead, inedible fish attempting to wash themselves up on the foul mud of the riverbank.

“Well, then, Loki, _fy anwylyd_ ,” Myrddin had said. “Do you feel better now?”

Loki answered morosely, “I never feel better,” and they two did not mention the subject again.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Bruce Banner exclaimed in disgust and Loki felt equally disgusted with himself. What by all the gods did he believe he was doing?

Except for Kurt, somewhere out in the grey, not a single Midgardian present would not rejoice at his death.

“You want to tell us where the kids are?” Banner said.  "Are they still alive, even?"

Foolishly, Loki wanted to ask, _What do you take me for?_

Foolishly, indeed.  He knew exactly how they perceived him.

“Safe," he replied wearily.  His throat hurt, as it had hurt for over a year. "With Tony on the borders of the Ironwood.”

As the others muttered amongst themselves, casting him, now and then, bitter and suspicious looks, Loki tried as best he could to draw upon each bit of non-sentient life he could reach within the castle: crawling insects, spiders, every sort of low vermin, even the paltry mosses and mildews that clung to the stony walls. They supplied to him so little strength, and that little of a most disagreeable kind.  They filled the back of his throat with a bitter, slimy, sickening taste, so that his stomach rolled over and he retched dryly, at some length, covering his face with his hands.

The Captain rubbed his back, trying to comfort him, he supposed, or to help him master the overwhelming impulse to vomit. Rogers, Loki had seen, was as kind and honorable a man as his lords allowed to be, even with the unworthy.

“Bruce, can’t you do something for him?” the Captain asked.

“With what, my good intentions? Even if I had a full kit, he’s still an alien.”

“It will pass. It will pass,” Loki gasped when he was able.

“I would see my brother. Please,” he told them after some time had gone by. The bout of illness had left him shaking, even weaker than he had been, despite the sustenance he had attempted to take in, in the vain hope of supporting the needs of his depleted body. The feeling of magic in this place continued thick and cloying, drowning his _seiðr_ with its poisoned treacle.  Another part seemed nearly electrical, jangling Loki's senses like a thousand separate lightning-threads.

Tucked within that, in a neat parcel separate from all the unpleasantness, he felt the desert heat of Neyaphem power, clean because it dwelt within Kurt. Marshaling his strength, Loki sent the lightest touch in his friend's direction, basking briefly in the warmth that was Kurt’s alone, then desolate because it had to end, fearful to bring down the watchers and listeners that seemed to skulk in every corner of the castle, especially those three secreted somewhere in the levels above, they who had guarded him, without mercy, through the last, torturous year.

No, Loki realized, not levels, but one particular level, and one particular room.  The room in which a suit of armour stood, a a silent masterpiece of magic, engineering, and cruelty that awaited him still, even though his body seemed spent, and surely could not produce another child.

He remembered how a near army of men catching him, transporting him from Asgard by what means Loki did not know, for surely even Heimdall, who hated him wholly, would not have been so heartless as to deliver him to such unkind hands.

Surely he had not. Loki told himself--though in the heart of his heart he suspected the watcher and gatekeeper had done exactly that thing, delivered him into the hands of enemies, let him be taken into an unknown place, all for dislike of him and the spite of the deed.

Loki had felt Midgard close him in like one of the coffins many of this world used to lock up their dead.  When he was brought into that room and understood that there he would truly be entombed, he'd panicked, losing every vestige of strategy or sense, fighting like a wild creature against brutal hands and poisonous magic—struggling so hard bones snapped, and veritable fountains of his blood spilled out upon the white floor. In the end, his eyes went dark.

And frozen there for the count of a year, he stood, and his children grew within him.

 

He had freed these mortals, these Avengers, from their bonds, yet only from the Captain did Loki feel any sort of fellow feeling. Kurt, in his nobility and greatness of heart, would undoubtedly tell him one did not perform right acts to obtain fellow feeling, one performed them because they were right—but then, his friend had an extremely curious way of thinking. He might have lasted the length of a eye-blink in Asgard, yet here on Midgard Kurt’s thinking seemed commendable. Loki missed him, and Tony--even though he had quite decided by now  that Tony would invariably come to hate him, and that his Shield-Brothers would mock him greatly for caring for one such as he.

He missed his greatly-loved children as he would miss his own heart.

“I would see Thor," Loki tried again.

"If you please,” he added, attempting to school both his voice and his temper, to sound more humble than imperious, even as he reached, with utmost care, trying to find the shape of his brother’s consciousness.

Loki badly needed Thor to be his brother in that moment, to have some measure of the closeness they’d once shared. He had not entirely put aside his his fury and hurt and bitterness entirely, but he needed the closeness more. It worried him that he could not feel the sturdy unbendable texture of Thor's thoughts anywhere near.

“Well, since you say please so nicely,” Banner said to him in the same tone of disgust. “By the way, guys, are we getting anything out of Thor these days, or just more of the same?”

“My brother is injured?” Loki had not for a moment thought this might be the case. He had counted, absolutely, on Thor being himself, strong, present, a rock in any storm. “Who has hurt my brother? I must go to him at once.”

“He sounds almost concerned,” Banner laughed. “Almost like a real boy.”

Loki forced himself into rigid control, commanded himself not to waste his strength by unleashing some small, nasty, punishing bit of magic that upon the so-called healer and man of science. If he was to receive no aid from Thor's Shield-Brothers and Sister, if this was the coldness with which they treated a sworn companion, so be it.  He would find Thor on his own, and accomplish any task that must be undertaken to free him.

Even the cloying treacle-magic of this place could not entirely blunt his senses. Loki sent out his thoughts, tightly focused, tightly shielded. “Kurt, dearest friend? Are you well? Are you here?”

A gentle tendril of thought touched his sending. Kurt was here, near and hidden well, in what he regarded as a perfect hiding place, his abilities merely depleted after the great leap that brought him this castle. What strength he had, he sent to Loki as a willing gift, and it not only bolstered him far better than the corrupt life-force of the castle’s crawling things, it brought courage to his heart.

Loki only hoped that Kurt had hidden himself extremely well indeed, that he not run afoul of the castle's evil denizens in any way, least of all whilst he was not best able to defend himself.

Loki left the Barton's cell, moving almost as softly and invisibly as Kurt might have done.  It occurred to him that the reluctance of those so-called Avengers to take him to their Shield-Brother was not truly because they feared what harm Loki might do to Thor, but because they feared what had already been done.

If the Golden Prince, the immortal, might be brought low, what might befall them?

Loki had nearly reached the dungeons last corner, and yet he had seen nothing, sensed nothing—and then, in a twisting instant, sensed _everything._ Before him lay a vast, dark, sticky ball of impenetrable magic, its diameter nearly equal to his own height, the whole composed of fibres that  wound round and round and round themselves.

With horror, Loki realized that all this tangled orb had been wound up from  _seiðr_ , only _seiðr_ of an entirely different order from his own, which shone always with a clear green light, no matter how dark his deeds—and Loki would admit, to himself at least, that he had in not-so-distant  times performed acts (even exclusive of those things done beneath the Mad Titan’s influence), that savoured far more of wickedness than mischief, and of which Loki could never be proud.

He should not have sent the Destroyer after Thor and ruined the Midgardian town where his brother had found friends and a measure of happiness. He should not, in his fury and self-loathing, have sought the destruction of Jӧtunnheimr, nor in similar passion slain his father Laufey. He wished, now, that he might have spent some minutes in conversation with the _Jӧtunn_ king instead, if only to ask of the mother who bore him, if only to seek some answer to his ceaseless “WHY?” that was not one of Odin’s slippery lies.

Ironic that he, Loki, be named the “god of lies,” when such a one sat in occupation of Hliðskjálf, Asgard’s golden throne, the throne of noble kings and heroes.

Ironic that Odin be named “Allfather” when he had been of no damned used to any of his sons.

Loki’s _seiðr_ shone green, he knew, because it burned from the honest impulses of his heart, whether those impulses were of love and courage, or anger and spite, those feelings were his and real.

This _seiðr_ , this sticky-dark ball of horror, was without centre or soul. Hovering his hand just above its strings, Loki read their history, how each had been torn, harvested somehow, from the bodies of dying women and men, magic-weavers like himself, and preserved, like figs preserved in some unclean, corrupt honey.

Loki’s heart beat too fast, hurting his chest, and he did not want to touch those strings, those dreadful sticky strings of dead _seiðr,_ though he knew he must if he hoped to save his brother.

He cast around him a spell of protection, hoping to shield himself from as much harm much as he could, though this act of Making drew hard on Loki's remaining energy.  His own clean _seiðr_ sheathing his hands in green light, he began to unwind the evil threads from around his helpless brother.

Strand by strand, snarl by tangle, Loki heard the poisonous lies Baldr had dripped into Thor’s ears, much like the poison the serpent had dripped, so long before, destroying his face, ruining his eyes.

Oh, so venomous, those lies!

 _Loki plotted your downfall_ , Baldr insinuated, _And he never loved you, Thor, as you loved him. How could he, brother, with the heart in his chest the monstous, frozen heart of a_ Jӧtunn?  On and on it went: Loki schemed for our father’s death, and caused our mother's demise by his hateful, careless speaking; he envied you mightily and wickedly, along with all that is rightfully only yours; Loki is a Liesmith, evil-tongued, not silver-tongued; Loki is a destructive fire that chars to ruin everything it touches...

At that, Loki’s heart smote him, and his mind began its endless, painful refrain, _If only, if only…_

But, oh, most painful of all, even after these many years, that between Baldr and himself, Loki had been the seducer and not the one taken unwilling, the debauched and not the innocent, completely deserving of his two centuries beneath the serpent. That Loki himself, in his cowardice and corruption, had slain sweet Narfi and Vali, and Odin Allfather stood guiltless of the deed.  That Loki himself had slain his dear boys in the furtherance performance of some dread rite intended to preserve his own hide.

The dark magic dripped off his hands, and with it his gloves of protecting light. Loki broke down entirely, bending his head onto Thor’s now-bare shoulder, sobbing out how sorry he was, how terribly, terribly sorry. With the last of his own abilities, he released the device that stole away his brother’s strength, clinging to him as he hadn’t since he was small, and something frightened him out of sleep.

He had always had such terrible dreams, Loki recalled, full of ice and noise and blurred blue forms. Were such dreams, Loki now had to ask, truly dreams at all, or deeply-buried memories of the night of his birth?

 _Foolish god, puny god, why must you ask_ , Loki chided himself, _When you already know the answer?_

* * *

Kurt felt much better for his brief rest, but decided it might be wiser to move around the castle by conventional methods, rather than ‘porting, even though he’d now built up a new series of firm images inside his head since his last stint as Doom’s "guest."

 _Ach_ , how innocent they'd been then, and how young!  Kurt hadn’t yet been twenty, and had admired his team leader Scott so deeply he now felt slightly ashamed of his blind hero-worship. He'd been equally impressed by Ororo, their wise weather-goddess. As for Logan, Kurt honestly couldn’t have said if he was more frightened of his unbending toughness or deeply, instantly, irredeemably in love with the man. He definitely remembered following him around everywhere, like a smitten blue puppy.

 _Lieber Gott im Himmel_ , how Kurt wished that Logan could be with him now! Even outgunned and outnumbered, as they'd been so many times, Kurt never felt afraid when Logan was near him. One warm, almost too-tight hug from Logan would do more to restore him than all the best medicines care the world had to offer.

Logan would have no idea where he'd disappeared to. He certainly wouldn't know Kurt had found himself trapped in Latveria.  In fact, from what Kitty would have been able to tell him, Logan was probably trying to break down the doors of wherever S.H.I.E.L.D. now kept their headquarters, demanding that Coulson (was he still the current director?) produce his fiancé immediately.

And if S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t been involved all along (and while Kurt would fully admit to being terribly naïve by Logan’s standards, their actually having being involved, in some capacity, was not beyond the realm of his belief) they might well be wondering where they’d managed to misplace their Avengers.

At the sound of voices along the corridor, Kurt made a swift leap to the vaulted ceiling, where the stone was rough and beautifully easy to cling to, and he stuck there firmly, tail furled, he could hide securely in the shadows, entirely invisible.

The men below him grumbled about their long hours in a state of high alert, and spoke spoke of a disturbance in the video feed, of possible intruders—nothing confirmed yet, but so, so many suspicions.

Echoes in the high-ceilinged hallway had made them sound like more than two, but only a a pair of guards approached, moving slowly, weary and disgruntled after many hours on their feet.  One, tall and thin, with dark-ginger hair, didn't look much like von Doom's regular men, who were, as a rule, Roma--Kurt guessed the ruler of Latveria had begun to swell the ranks of his troops with foreign mercenaries.  His partner, shorter and stocky, with olive skin and cropped jet-black hair, struck him as the very picture of a soldier of Doomstadt.  Both men wore the usual uniform of Castle Doom: dull iron greaves and vambraces, green tunics, chainmail.

Lucky for Kurt, the guards wore their livery sloppily, the mail-coifs pushed back from their heads. He sent his tail striking, quicker than any snake, breaking the redhead's neck instantly. Nineteen-year-old Kurt would have hesitated, shown mercy. Twenty-nine-year-old Kurt had learned hard truths--that dead men truly tell no tales, and that he was alone, weakened, unarmed, with whatever potential allies he had here Castle Doom most likely in no better shape. He couldn’t afford, no matter how much it grieved him, to leave these men in bonds that they might possibly escape, to potentially have to fight them all over again.

The shorter guard turned, doing almost a cartoon double-take, clearly wondering where his companion had disappeared to.  He found out soon enough when Kurt dropped the corpse from on high to land by the toes of his boots, then smacked him across his stolid face with the spade-shaped end of his tail, knocking him unconscious between one breath and the next.

Kurt released his hold on the ceiling, landing lightly on the stone floor, mindful, this time, of his injured foot.  He dragged both guards into the nearest unlocked room, shutting the door behind himself.

The unconscious guard woke quickly when Kurt pinched his earlobe, the lids of his chocolate-colored eyes fluttering for a moment before he focused on his captor, his glare full of equal parts fear and hate.

 _He probably thinks he's gone to hell_ , Kurt thought, with a certain amount of sadness.

He wound his tail tightly around the man’s short, thick neck, just above his the knot of his Adam's apple, ready to choke or subdue in an instant.  The right pressure, and the guard's larynx would crack like a walnut.

Kurt hated to know such things--however, he generally found his appearance alone sufficed to elicit all sorts of information.

“Brother,” Kurt said quietly, his educated guess telling him to address the guard in Latveria's native tongue. “I ask you not to scream.”

Naturally, the man did scream. They always screamed. Which was why Kurt had already pressed his hand firmly over the man’s mouth.

“ _Diavol! Fiul răului!_ ” the guard shrieked, almost soundlessly, against Kurt's palm. He half wished he’d hadn't been wearing his glove, that this contrary guard would get a mouthful of fuzz for his lack of cooperation.

“No, I am neither a devil nor a ‘son of evil,’" Kurt answered, "Though I award full points for originality. Usually I hear "fiend from hell." I’m actually looking for some information, my friend. Tell me about the American prisoners. What’s to become of them, do you know?”

Cautiously, Kurt lifted his hand.

“They are the Master’s,” the guard muttered.

Kurt sighed. In the presence of a phrase such as, “They are the Master’s,” he’d long ago learned to expect nothing further but blind ignorance and mindless superstition. “Do you confess, Brother? If you do, then this is the time. I give you one minute.”

“Confess? What should I confess to you, monster? I am the Master’s!”

“Not that kind of confession.” Kurt leaned closer, shining his yellow eyes into the guard’s wild brown ones. He waited as the eyes shut, tears leaking past stubby black lashes.

When one minute had passed, he gave a sharp snap to his tail and walked from the room, taking the guards’ weapons, shutting the door again, carefully, behind him.

He leaped again to the vaults, hurrying along to where the one wide corridor branched into two separate, narrower hallways. At this branch, the ceiling rose higher and in a more complicated construction than in any other part of the maze. There Kurt withdrew into the deepest shadows and wept, covering his bright eyes with his hands to obscure them from view. He wished with his whole heart, wracked with shudders, and with a deep ache of sadness in his belly, that Logan could be there, partly to explain to him again why such things were sometimes necessary, but mostly just to hold him tight and make him feel lovable again, instead of dirty.

There'd been a time when Kurt would immediately have prayed for forgiveness and confessed his sins, but he no longer knew what became of the sins of one who lacked an immortal soul.  It wasn’t a question he felt he could ask any priest he’d ever met.

Kurt decided then, and damn the consequences, that he would waste no more time creeping like the monster he was along the corridors of Castle Doom. Instead he intended to teleport directly to wherever Loki might be. Perhaps, monsters together, they might even find comfort, as they had before, in one another's company.

Just now though, Kurt perched in the vaults and contemplated several things, the first being how to connect with the Avengers, their possible allies. Disheartened, he decided he couldn't bear to think any more, not for another moment, and in this state of disheartenment, he bamfed to find Loki.

The spectacle of the entire Avengers team standing in a ragged circle around their comrade (and here Kurt had to laugh a little at himself, because the language centers of his brain, thanks, of course, to Loki, had tried to supply him with the term “Shield-Brother” in place of the more familiar "teammate" or "comrade"), who lay, alongside his brother, on the floor, both men half-conscious and covered with brown goo.

“Are they worn out after a long bout of gravy wrestling?” The archer, Barton, wondered.

When Kurt smacked him on the ass with a powerful flick of his tail, the marksman startled satisfyingly.

The lack of concern they displayed disgusted him, especially since the scene before them may have looked funny, in a way (Loki and his brother really did appear to be drenched in rich brown gravy), but it wasn’t.  The reek of evil magic hung everywhere--a stench with which Kurt, thanks to his foster-mother, Margali, had become only too familiar.  This magic, though, struck him as even worse, corrupted and dangerously unstable.

“Water!" Kurt called out, alarmed by the way the reek began to grow around them until it had become nearly palpable. "Now! Bruce, all of you, fetch water, as much as you can manage. This stuff is toxic, and unbelievably dangerous!”

Bruce shook himself, as if he’d almost been asleep before Kurt roused him—but then he just seemed to drift off again.

The entire castle exuded an atmosphere of magic, not merely the spoiled stuff in the cell with them, pervasive, oppressing him but possessing the others. Kurt knew he had a dark thought now and then—who didn’t?—but his mind was not in general a troubled place, and whatever else he thought of them, the Avengers could not normally be so very slow to act, could they?

He smoothed on his uniform gloves again, knowing the unstable-molecule fabric would be at least provide some protection for his hands. Holding his breath, Kurt began to scoop the brown goo away from the brothers’ still forms.

Someone nudged his shoulder. “Here. Blue.” It was the red-haired woman, looking fairly unsteady on her feet, but at least more awake than her teammates. “I had to rinse out a pee bucket, but I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Kurt had to laugh. “The secret is safe with me. I’m not sure if you remember, but I'm Kurt.”

She smiled--not necessarily a warm smile, but one of familiarity, at least. "Natasha. I recognize you from a rescue or two, Kurt. You’re not easy to miss.”

“So I’m told. I've always assumed it's my sparkling personality. Pour here, please, where the poison lies thickest. That’s it.”

“I meant rockin’ the spandex. Better than Cap even. Though I guess that’s not a very appropriate thing to say.” Natasha slurred her words, like a woman who'd had far too much to drink. She staggered a little, also, as she left and returned with the bucket full, water slopping badly over the brim.

"Damn."  Natasha shook her head as if trying to clear it, flaming hair falling across her face.  

“ _Ja_ , that’s good. I take no offense, Natasha.  'Rockin' the spandex' strikes me as infinitely better than, ‘You’re blue,’ or ‘Are you sure you're not a demon?’ Mix and match those statements as desired.”

“People are idiots.” Natasha lurched off to fill the bucket again, dumping it over Loki’s head. “Hey!" she called.  "Loki! I’m dousing you in pee! Oh, shit, he’s looking at me!”

Loki raised his head from his brother’s shoulder, blinking water out of his eyes, his formerly only wavy hair turned almost ridiculously curly by the wetness.

Kurt?” he said, in a hoarse, shaky voice. “Is my brother…?”

“I think he’ll be fine, Loki.” Kurt soothed, thought he hadn't the least idea how Thor would be well or not when he awakened.  If he awakened.

Between them, Kurt and Natasha raised the god to his feet, setting him down in the bed-shelf. With a weary flick of his fingers, Loki banished the last of the goo. 

“Someone has been stealing reckless quantities of _seiðr_ ,” he said. “Would you care to hazard a guess, Kurt, whether the thief might be your cruel foster-brother, or mine?” He turned his eyes to Natasha. “At last we have discovered, perhaps, a crime too evil even for me to have contemplated. To steal a mage’s _seiðr_ is to steal more than mere mortal life.  It is on a level with the stealing of a soul, and it leaves behind a shattered emptiness, a desolation in the victim, and erodes away also any vestige of goodness in the thief. No act of magic performed thereafter can be turned to the least benevolence.”

He leaned forward, brushing Thor’s hair back from his face, tenderly pressing his palms to his brother's forehead and cheeks. “His flesh waxes cold. Can aught be found to warm him?”

As if that broke a spell, the other Avengers shook themselves awake. The archer actually fished Thor’s red cloak out of a corner, passing it to the Captain, who passed it to Loki.

“Lo, are you all right?” Kurt asked softly, because even as the god fussed a little draping the warm fabric around the shoulders of his bulkier brother, he seemed scarcely conscious, swaying and shaking as he attempted to soothe Thor.

Eventually Thor's own shudders slowed. His blue eyes opened fully, clear and solemn, his handsome face also solemn, its expression wise and thoughtful. “Loki,” he said, large, blunt fingers caressing his brother’s cheek.

“It is I, Thor,” Loki answered. “I have come to save you, brother, together with your friends.”

“I thought I was to be your brother no more. I thought you wanted nothing of the family who gave you succor for the whole of your sorry existence.”

“Thor…”

“Am I not to believe you now?” Thor’s hand shifted to Loki’s throat, holding tighter and tighter still, lifting him. “Am I not to take you at your word, Liesmith?” As Loki’s feet dangled over the cobbles, Thor slammed him into the stone wall. "Betrayer!” Slam! “Accursed!” Slam! “Monster!”

“Thor, stop!” Captain America called. “He's your brother, and you'll kill him. Thor! You _are_ killing him!”

"No brother of mine," Thor spoke calmly.  "Only a Jӧtunn beast."

Kurt flung himself at the wall, trying from above to wrestle his friend from Thor’s hold. His powerful tail, that could so easily snap a lesser man’s neck, would not even dent the skin of the god’s throat. Thor merely caught hold of it at the base and gave a small, sharp, violent twist.

The pain was instantaneous and immense. Kurt fell to the floor face down, unable to so much as turn over. Thor’s booted foot pressed into his neck, cutting off his air.

“Take my life, Thor.” Loki cried out woozily, working hard to keep to his feet. "Kurt is good and innocent and does not deserve this. He is not the betrayer, I am.  If you would punish someone, punish me.”

Thor’s hand hung in the air, as if undecided whether it wanted to grip again or become a fist. Loki touched it gently.

“I am the betrayer, Thor, and you are just. Take my life, please--but not the life of my friend.”

Thor backhanded his brother against the wall. “But it isn’t your _life_ I want, Loki. I want to see your best trick.” He pressed a little harder on Kurt’s throat. “Now. Your true face, not-brother. It means nothing to me if your friend dies. ”

“As you wish,” answered Loki quietly. His skin gave a slight ripple and was alabaster no more, but a clear delicate shade of blue marked here and there with thin white lines. His eyes were the color of rubies. He possessed, also, a small and exquisitely curled pair of horns, black and shiny as obsidian, as his nails--very much like claws now--and his long, thick hair were black.

It was, if anything, Kurt considered, even more beautiful than his friend's _Æsir_ form, and it broke Kurt’s heart to see Thor mock and jeer at every separate part of it—and to see Loki’s heart break beneath this torrent of abuse.

The moment the boot moved away from his throat, Kurt dragged himself to Loki’s side.

"Don't believe a word of what he tells you," Kurt cried. "You are wonderful, you are beautiful, my friend, my dear friend,” he murmured then, holding Loki tight, not caring how either of them hurt, blindly caressing that icy blue skin.

“What’s wrong with you?” he shouted at the others, not sure which was greater, his grief or his rage. “What’s wrong with you?”

Their faces remained white and cold, devoid of human feeling.

Kurt teleported his friend away to the perfect hiding space he’d found.

Only to find Doctor Doom, and Baldr--and, of course, Kurt's own nightmare-brother, Stefan--waiting there, as if they'd stood in that place all the while.

"Good morrow, my brave blue princes," Baldr said, smiling, bending in a mocking little bow, "What a joy it is to greet you again!"


	9. To Everything There Is a Purpose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes all that wander _are_ lost--namely Tony and the kids. Kurt converses with the enemy. Natasha contemplates a rescue mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief note: this chapter touches down very, very briefly on the subject of God/religion. This is not intended to offend anyone of whatever faith or lack thereof, it is merely part of the thought process of the p.o.v. character (Kurt, who in canon has been depicted as extremely devout), in that section, and what Kurt has to say on the subject isn't, I think, exactly radical.
> 
> For reasons unknown, the part of Victor von Doom _sans_ mask decided to be played by John Noble, and my headcanon Jöri is apparently Jack Frost from _Rise of the Guardians_ , albeit younger and slightly more snaky. Weirdly, Jack and Loki have basically the same facial structure. Is it a Frost thing?
> 
> "Childlike Empress," Tony's new nickname for Hela is from _The Neverending Story_
> 
> "The Dread Pirate Roberts" (who takes no prisoners, except when he does) comes from _The Princess Bride_ , both the book by William Goldman (1973) and the movie (1987).
> 
> Bigwigs=important people The term originated in the 17th or 18th centuries, when wigs were the fashion, and at certain times during the period, the larger they were the more fashionable they were considered. Since wigs (shortened from the original term, "periwigs") in general weren't cheap, and the more mammoth they were the more expensive they became, meaning only extremely rich and important people could afford the really giant ones. "Bigwigs," became, literally, the people in the big wigs.
> 
> "One smart cookie"=an intelligent person. In the 1920's "cookie" was a complimentary slang term for woman. The "smart" seems to have been added mostly because people liked the way it sounded, and by 1948, at the peak of its popularity, the phrase had not only become ingrained in the vernacular, it had lost its feminine connotation and could be applied to either a man or a woman.
> 
> " _To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose..."_ Hela, tiny know-it-all that she is, is quoting _Ecclesiastes_ 3:1 (KJV) 
> 
> Multitudinous translations in the end notes.

* * *

While Fenrir sat looking patiently wolfy and Jöri popped out his small green lizard ear-frills of anxiety, Hela appeared to be having a barely-restrained royal temper tantrum.

“Pabbi _hefur eyðilagt innri áttavita okkar!_ ” she _Götterdämmerung_ ed in her best ringing, cut-crystal, ear-destroying cry of the Valkyrie ( _oh, excuse me, Princess_ ,Tony thought, _Valkyrja_ ), and even went so far as to dramatically kick the trunk of one of the ironwood trees with the toe of the sturdy yet stylishly feminine boot she’d magicked up for herself.

Because yes, they were back at the ironwood forest. For the third time. Each time they’d set out, following a different kiddo’s internal compass. Each time they’d ended up circled back around to Point A. Ladies and Gentlemen, the edge of the Ironwood, once more with feeling!

_Your fucking_ Pabbi, Tony thought. Three sets of eyes in three different shades of green turned reproachfully in his direction, Fen doing a special quick-morph just for the purpose of looking reproachfully human, it seemed.

All three kids were now the size of six-year olds, and each was uncannily beautiful in his or her own way, all the more so for the Victorian playwear Hela had for some reason dressed them in. She’d given Tony new clothes too, to replace his by-this-time-thoroughly-ratty Iron Man longjohns: black breeches, black boots, a black puffy shirt. He looked like the goddamned Dread Pirate Roberts.

Tony guessed he was just glad she hadn’t made him wear a mask.

He could only hope Clint never saw him like this, because of course, like a typical kid (at least the typical kids he knew) Hela categorically refused to change him back into the disgusting longjohns (Tony saw her point). Or into anything less... piratey.

“ _Róa þig, verður sagna systur_ ,” Jöri attempted to placate Hela. “ _Með aðstoð snjöllum Uncle Tony, eigum við að finna leið okkar_.”

“' _Pabbi_ has destroyed our inner compass'!” newly kidlike Fen translated for Tony’s benefit. “'Calm yourself, worthy-of-sagas sister. With the aid of clever Uncle Tony, we shall find our path.'”

_Great_ , Tony thought, _It’s not like clever Uncle Tony is fresh out of ideas or anything._ He sank down, totally despondent, on a hollow log, the boys lined up beside him. He was somewhat amused to notice that they were mimicking his posture: slightly bent over, elbows propped on knees.

“Yo, Childlike Empress,” Tony called to Hela. She left off abusing the tree to turn and glare at him.

“C’mon over here,” he told her. “Let’s take a breather.”

To his surprise, she not only came, but climbed up into his lap, leaning her head, with its amazing cloud of dark hair, sweetly against Tony’s chest.

“Why would _Pabbi_ do this?” Hela murmured. “Does he not trust me?”

_Trust you?_ Tony knew exactly why Loki had done what he'd done, and it made his chest ache more than a little, for what was, and maybe could have been. _Baby, the noble asshole was trying to save you.  He was trying to save us all._

* * *

_Kurt, begone! Kurt, GO FORTH!_

Loki’s voice echoed in Kurt's head, loud enough to make his ears ring. For the first time in his life he 'ported without having instigated the jump, and hoped to _Gott im Himmel_ Loki knew what he was doing. If _Herr Unfug_ put him inside a wall for the second time that week, words would be spoken. He liked his feet, and keeping at least one of them intact would be his preference.

Loki, however, did not deliver Kurt anywhere near danger—to him at least. Instead Kurt found himself quite high above the stone floor, inside the vaultings of a tower’s peak. He reached out by reflex for the wall, pulling himself close, into the shadows where he disappeared.

_Loki?_ he sent, hoping no one else could hear. Kleiner Bruder?

In return, Stefan’s voice sing-songed in his head, _He can’t hear you, my_ kleiner Bruder. _Would **you** like to hear him scream?_

Kurt tore himself away before the net of magic he felt Stefan begin to weave could trap him. He shut tight the windows and doors of his mind, just as _lieber Herr Professor_ had taught him. It had been their secret, always, that Kurt possessed just that bit more in the way of gifts (or curses, as the case might be) than either of them let on.

Kurt knew this "extra" came to him from his father, because Azazel was more than merely a mutant of times past. More of what he was existed in his son than Kurt would ever be comfortable letting on, even to his dear _Herr Professor_ , a man of science who found it difficult, always, to believe in such things--in magic _as_ magic, instead of some form of advanced science not currently understood by human minds.

Loki understood, because he and Loki were alike in many ways. Kurt, friendly young man that he was, had many, many friends, and he loved his Logan to the depths and heights of himself, but he had never before met a _Seelenverwandten_ , a soulmate. Short a time as they’d known each other, and even knowing how easily love came to him, he would have done any needed thing for his Loki, his _andere selbst_ , his other self.

Some, not understanding, and knowing the mischief god’s abilities, might have spoken of mind-control, of the subversion of himself, but Kurt knew that was not the case. Not even _Herr Professor_ had been able to compel him in any direction. Only his father, _verdammt_ Azazel, had the power to manipulate him, by exerting all his might and their blood-connection, but that had been only once. Never again.

Perhaps he’d found no home in heaven, despite the great mercy of his Lord, because such as he could never truly belong there.

Kurt could weep in his heart, and truly grieve but, as was the way of all demons, his body would not produce tears naturally, without an illusion.

In another dimension lay a sad, twisted, accursed place called Limbo, and he and Charles Xavier had both known the true identity of its once-ruler. Belasco, he called himself, a bitter, broken, vicious, furious creature, all spite and rage, burning with the fiery magic of the Neyaphem, beyond hope of any redemption.

_I am he, and he is me_ , Kurt had known from the beginning, _If I ever gave in. If I let my birthright overtake me._

Every day of his life he walked the tightrope between the teachings of his Lord—endless forgiveness, boundless kindness, always to love and not judge—and the fear that he'd become like Belasco, his other _andere selbst_ , his demon, his cautionary tale.

Kurt clung closer to the wall, trying not to allow himself to experience the full force of how tired he actually felt, how he ached, how disgusted he'd come to be with the evil scheming beings who caused him to be here, in Castle Doom— _Ach du lieber_!—in Doomstadt, in this poor benighted country of Latveria.

It surprised Kurt, now and then, that von Doom hadn’t named his country Doomveria, to go with all the rest.

An armored man sat far below him-- _the_ armored man, Dr. Doom himself--a solitary figure in a throne-like chair, at the head of a long table with many chairs that stood absolutely empty, a line of his motionless Doombots, all dressed exactly as he was, arrayed in a line behind him.

_So,_ Kurt considered, The Doom we saw below could not have been real. Was it one of his creations?

_Likely so_ , Kurt thought. _Likely so._

As Kurt watched, a Roma servant in green livery pushed a dull steel cart into the room. On the cart had been arranged an assortment of dishes, all covered with equally dull steel domes, and with them a tall glass flagon, most likely containing a dark red wine, for all that, judging by the position of the sun, it couldn’t have been past nine in the morning.

The servant bowed and departed, slippered and discrete.

Von Doom waved an imperious hand. “Out. All of you.”

The iron-masked Doombots left, still in a line, mechanical and noisy with their steel shoes and jingling chain mail.

Alone at his table, then, von Doom visibly sighed, his broad, square shoulders slumping. He took the carafe of wine from the cart, pouring a generous portion into an ornate goblet covered in gold.

Kurt crept down from the vaults softly, soundlessly descending the wall. As he gained the floor, von Doom raised his hands to his face and removed his mask, setting it to one side of his plate.

He lifted his cup in both hands and drank, almost desperately, a thin thread of wine spilling down his chin.

_Victor_ , Kurt said, in the language of Latveria , speaking calmly and quietly inside the tyrant's mind, _Nu vă alarmaţi sau frică. Este doar eu, Kurt Wagner. Ne-am întâlnit în trecut. Nu te pot face rău. Eu sunt de etnie romă, așa cum ești, și am_ _auzit ești prietenul tuturor natură noastre._

_Do not be alarmed or afraid. It is only I, Kurt Wagner. We have met in the past. I cannot harm you. I am Roma, as you are, and I hear you are a friend to all of our kind._

The cup flew out of von Doom’s hands. Kurt caught it easily enough with his tail, though movement of his extra appendage, badly wrenched by the thunder god, still pained him severely. He lowered the goblet neatly to the table, giving von Doom a small smile, even as he set one of his slim hands over the ruler’s much larger hands, before he could bring them to cover his face again.

Kurt, who had hidden so often in his younger years, could understand the impulse to hide above all else, even one’s own defense, and experienced only sympathy.

He flashed back briefly to the bloated Texan, Amos Jardine, who after purchasing _Die Jahrmarkt_ had kept and displayed him in a cage, in which he could not hide from anything, even himself. Kurt remembered flinging his body at the bars, screaming like a crazed thing, like a captive animal.

He now felt only a gentle pity for the shamed and tortured boy he'd been, and experienced, oddly, a touch of the same emotion for this lonely madman, whatever his sins.

"I should kill you for seeing me thus," von Doom growled.

“See how I am?” Kurt said aloud, with friendly humor, still speaking von Doom's tongue. “Why would you imagine you need to conceal your face from me, who appears as I do?”

“Are you a demon? A devil?”

Having no visible pupils or irises worked wonderfully well when concealing an involuntary eye-roll, Kurt considered.

He set his other hand lightly on von Doom’s shoulder. “May I sit?”

All the legends spoke of the Latverian ruler being hideously disfigured: a laboratory experiment gone terribly wrong, an explosion, or the near-molten heat of his newly-forged mask searing the skin from his face.

In truth, von Doom had one small hook-shaped scar, exactly like a comma, curving down by the corner of his right eye. It was about half the length of a small child's smallest finger. Von Doom was a heavy-featured man whose skin-tone ought to have been olive, except that lack of exposure to sunlight had left it sickly yellow. His eyes were chocolate-brown and tired, surrounded by heavy circles like dark bruises.

_'Vanity of vanities_ ,' Kurt thought sadly, in the words of Ecclesiastes, _'All is vanity_.'

“Sit.” The ruler of Latveria indicated the tall-backed chair by his right hand. Dust lay gray and nearly furry on its velvet seat, but Kurt didn’t want to anger or otherwise disturb von Doom by pausing to brush it clean. He merely sat as instructed, his eyes never leaving the tyrant's muddy eyes.

“You are truly hideous in your countenance, boy,” the Latverian told him, “Yet at the same, oddly comely. I feel I could stare at your face for hours.”

_And that's in no way creepy_ , Kurt thought, shielding his mind carefully. He wondered when someone, anyone, had last spoken to this man openly, kindly, in friendship.

Von Doom turned over his hands, taking Kurt’s strong, though much smaller hand between them, studying its shape, the flex of Kurt’s fingers and thumb, the subtle but unusually-ridged texture of his palm, the soft fur over his knuckles.

_Pase ciudat, dar ciudat minunat,_ he said.

“Passing strange, yet strangely lovely.” Kurt gave a soft laugh. I like how you describe me, _Doftorici_ Doom.”

“No titles here,” von Doom told him, “And no false names. So, you will not be Nightcrawler in this place, you will be Kurt.”

“And you will be only Victor, _ja_?” Kurt smiled. “You remember me?”

“I remember everything,” said von Doom. “Such is my curse. But here, as you say, I am only Victor, and we are not enemies.”

“I was never your enemy,” Kurt told him gently, and truly his heart went out to the man, for what a curse it was, indeed—and he knew this to be von Doom’s true meaning—that every insult, every slight, however miniscule, had etched itself deep in his heart. He’d been born without the ability to forget or forgive anything. No wonder he’d lost himself in madness. He could never live without suspicion, distrust, hatred. He could never in his life make a friend, only a henchman, a minion, an enemy.

“I will eat now,” von Doom said. “Serve me. Eat with me. Entertain me.”

Kurt couldn’t help but think of Pippin the Hobbit, singing sweetly (if nervously) for Lord Denethor (who von Doom also physically—and very likely, mentally—somewhat resembled) in _Lord of the Rings_. Well, Kurt could sing too, in his way. What good was charm, if you didn’t use it? What use was sympathy, and the ability to listen, if it could not be given to a sad, lonely madman like Victor von Doom?

_Natasha_ , Kurt sent, _Can you hear me?_

_What?_ she snapped back.

_Your team?_

_Zombies. Useless. Except Thor—he’s catatonic again. Are you talking in my_ ебаный _brain, hotass?_   A pause. I did _not_ mean to say that.

_This might be a good time to just roll with it,_ Kurt suggested gently. He showed her the path to the room with the suit of armor, meant violate instead of protect its wearer. _Can you find your way? Rescue mission?_

Sending back and forth with Natasha was nothing like the rapport he shared with Loki and his children, or even his easy communication with Tony who, if somewhat on the loud side, concealed nothing. The Russian’s mind scurried within itself—such a contrast to her outward icily calm demeanor!—trying to hide bits of herself that Kurt would never have been able to see if all that motion hadn't thrown them directly into his view.

How like his current host Natasha was in that way.

The notion surprised him.

_I would never invade your privacy, Natasha,_ Kurt told her. _I can only hear what you want me to hear, see what you want me to see. This isn’t telepathy, I can’t read your mind, like my mentor Professor Xavier. It’s only a knack that was given to me._

Natasha relaxed the slightest amount, though barbed wire still surrounded her mind and her heart.

_Rescue mission? You mean Loki. After what he did to Clint? Maybe he should get what he gets._

_He freed you in the dungeon,_ Kurt reminded her _, When he didn’t need to. He healed your partner's jaw._

_How much punishment is enough, Natasha?_ Kurt asked--and then he opened, still within her mind, the door to that blank, white room where the terrible carapace hung, suspended in its tangle of wires and tubes, showed her the armor, in all its particulars and parts: the mask that sealed in the burning salt of Loki’s tears, the muzzle that screwed into his bones and locked his jaw open, forcing in food, forcing in their potions, swallowing Loki's screams.  He explained the one frozen position in which Loki had been made to stand, month after agonizing month, his skin breaking down inside his metal cage. Last of all he showed her the orifice and the wand, the instrument of penetration, the way Baldr’s seed had been punched in through Loki's flesh.

Such cruelty lay far from Kurt’s ordinary nature.  It sickened him even to think of such events, much less implant their images into Natasha's mind--but she must understand.  She must.

Kurt did what he had to do to save his friend.  He'd beg her forgiveness another time.

All the while, as he showed Natasha these brutalities, Kurt sat at Doom’s table, not allowing his body to tremble, or his voice to falter, speaking pleasingly, charmingly, of inconsequential things, to a homicidal madman.

_How_ , Kurt wondered, _Do I find myself in these situations?_

_Gott im Himmel, hilf mir_ , he Kurt thought, _Mach mich gleich diesem Unternehmen._

_God in heaven, help me. Make me equal to this undertaking._

He would be a furry blue Scheherazade, if that’s what it took—for as long as it took. He would listen, with patience, to all this man’s ravings, whatever it required to contain von Doom, and keep him away from the others.

“As we eat, would you tell me more of _Project Angrboða_?” Kurt asked. “Believe me, I am entirely fascinated. The children made by your genius are remarkable. Are they truly designed to bring about the end of all things, just as in the stories?”

“The name of the Project and the organic seed itself came from Prince Baldr of Asgard, the design itself all mine…” von Doom began.

With sorrow and horror, Kurt listened.

* * *

Natasha, who was such a closet film buff Clint sometimes called her the Russian IMDB, was reminded immediately of the movie _Zardoz_ —a ridiculous piece of futuristic mid-seventies mindfuck directed by the otherwise-talented John Boorman and featuring Sean Connery, in a role about as far from James Bond as an actor could get (Connery's costume having been, basically, wristbands and a brown leather diaper. In one particularly memorable scene, there were a bunch of people standing around listlessly in a cave. When Zed (the hero, Sean Connery, of course) entered with his female companion, she reached out for the arm of one of the slumpy standers, lifting it above the woman's head.

“These are The Apathetics!” the female companion intoned.

The raised arm had flopped right down again. Natasha remembered laughing. It had all been weirdly funny.

She recreated that scene for Clint sometimes, when she really, really, really didn’t want to do something, which was actually far more often than others might have suspected.

"I am An Apathetic!" she'd proclaim, hand in the air as if answering a question in school, then let her arm drop limply.

Clint, her best friend now and always, laughed every time. He was great for that sort of thing.

Natasha might have been morally compromised, but she wasn’t crazy, at least no more than an ex-Russian operative trained in the Red Room (something of a mindfuck and a torture chamber rolled into one) and current (more or less) S.H.I.E.L.D. (such as it was at the moment) spy and assassin needed to be.

Currently, she was very much both those things. Yes, she did her snooping and killing for the side of the angels (again, more or less), but it continued to be debatable whether the new “white hat” red would in fact wash out the old “black hat” red, or just add to it.

Maybe she should retire and start up a soap company. She could call it “ _Lady Macbeth’s_.”

The truth was, Natasha suspected, her hands would never, ever be clean, and on her slate were written a vast number of names, many belonging to people not even remotely guilty of anything but being human and in the wrong place.  The bigwigs liked to call these unfortunates “civilian casualties,” or the even less guilt-inspiring “collateral damage,” as if they were nothing but random bits of the terrain, like barns or water towers or shrubbery—that had been _oopsed!_ into oblivion.

Natasha had the reputation--possibly even deserved, she liked to think--for being one smart cookie.  Thanks to her Russian origins, she fully believed life was in its essence a tragedy (intermingled, here and there, with the bitterest of dark comedy—in flavor like the 87% dark chocolate Clint sometimes liked to eat, that made Natasha’s sweets-loving tongue practically grow fur).  Words like “collateral damage” couldn't fool her.  She recognized phrases like that as what they were--wicked lies coined by the morally bankrupt to justify evil deeds.

She knew also that she had let herself be used, the sharpest of sharp swords, wielded by uncaring hands.

“I am an Apathetic,” Natasha said aloud.

Her companions—no, her friends now, the only ones beside Clint and her sweetheart she’d ever really known—gazed at her with the stunned, dull eyes of soon-to-be-slaughtered cows. They were, truly, in this moment, Apathetics instead of Avengers.

It tore at Natasha's heart to see them. They were good men, the best of her acquaintance, and they didn’t deserve this.

She’d be willing to bet, if he could manage to hold things together, Loki (like Felix the Cat, her favorite cartoon character) could pull something out of his bag of tricks to save them.

Only Natasha didn’t want to save him. Why? Because of the attack on New York, her adopted city and home-from-home? The observation wasn’t lost on her that during that time, like Clint’s and crazy Selvig’s, Loki’s eyes had been blue, but now were vivid green, green as jealousy.

It wasn’t lost on Natasha either that during poor, comatose Thor’s attack, a true villain’s thoughts would have been all on himself, on saving his own skin, not filled with overwhelming concern for his friend.

Besides, Kurt had asked her, and she was very much inclined to like Kurt in ways that had nothing to do with his washboard abs and delectable glutes.  Natasha wasn’t all that into guys anyway, though she’d been known to make exceptions. The main thing was, decency had become such a rare thing, pretty soon it would only be seen in museums, but Kurt practically shone with decency through and through.

If Kurt could see good in Loki, it also stood to reason he could see good in her.

Still, to abandon her friends and teammates here, in the bowels of Castle Doom, in order to save чертов Loki…?

Natasha sighed, a uniquely Russian sigh she’d probably picked up from her бабушка, her grandmother, when she still lay in her cradle, and began to work her way out of the dungeons.

* * *

“Well, we can’t just sit here,” Tony said finally. They’d just eaten—roast rabbit courtesy of the boys, berries, and some kind of nut that put fur on his tongue but Hela assured him was fit for consumption (except for Jöri, who was apparently allergic).

“Like _Pabbi_ ,” Hela told him.

Jöri, who really only cared for the meat, but consented to take a couple berries to please his Empress, wasn’t much bothered.

Tony kept up morale (mostly his own) by explaining about restaurants, then pretending to be an extremely snooty French waiter, offering each of the kids in turn, _“Lapin rôti avec des baies à une réduction de rien.”_

Tony didn't speak French really, but he'd been to a lot of French restaurants over the years, and it was always good to at least try to appear suave. It went with the whole Tony Stark Billionaire-Playboy-Philanthropist thing.

Hela giggled. “Roast rabbit with berries in a reduction of nothing? What an apt description, Uncle Tony.”

"I'm an unusually honest French waiter," Tony answered, but he couldn't help but stare at her.

Just one week old (or maybe a little more--Tony had totally lost both whatever time-sense he'd once possessed _and_  his brand new prototype StarkPhone during all those weird, hot, timeless hours on board the fauxlicarrier), and Hela both understood French and could use the word "apt" correctly in a sentence?

Hela wiped her face delicately and self-consciously with her fingertips. She’d taken off her gloves to eat (Miss Manners would approve), but The Law According to the Childlike Empress stated that the absence of those gloves meant no one was to touch her. At no time and for no reason.

“That’s very O.C.D. of you,” Tony said, joking.

Hela narrowed the emerald eyes of doom (or, rather, Loki) at him. “No,” she said. “It isn’t. ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose...’”

That shut Tony up, more or less. When a week (give or take) old baby sternly quotes the King James Bible at you, it’s kinda hard to argue.

Tony was still staring when Fenrir tugged on one leg of his pirate pants.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

Fen’s little round face had gone scrunchy with concern.

“Do you have it?”

“Have what, Fen?”

“ _Stykki af pabbi í þé_ r,” Fen answered.

Jöri straightened up from burying their leavings. “The piece of Pabbi within you,” he translated. “Oh, yes, Uncle Tony, I’m sure you do!”

Hela’s eyes widened. She seemed slightly offended that her brothers had come up with an idea before she did. “Oh, yes,” she said excitedly, “Uncle Tony, you do! Show him, Fen.”

Fen pressed his small, chubby, clawed hands to Tony’s cheeks, bringing Tony’s face down until their foreheads touched. He shuddered a little as Fen’s consciousness joined with his, but there wasn’t anything unpleasant about it—it seemed little, furry and round, much like Fen himself, with a tickly-but-cute strangeness.

He found himself wrapping his arms around the boy, holding him close.

Dear Fen. Sweet Fen. And Hela. And Jöri. His love for these children was boundless. He had no way to explain or understand it, he could only feel.

Since when did he, Anthony Edward Stark accept something just by feeling it? Where were his formulae, his empiric data?

His mind opened up, like one of those night-blooming flowers.

There, inside, rose a pillar of green fire, fire that caused him, for some strange reason, not the least amount of worry.  When Tony and Fen stepped inside, a map spread out at their feet. No doubt at all existed in his mind that the map was Loki’s—the damn thing looked like what would happen if you merged the game board from _Candyland_ with one from an antique British edition of _Snakes and Ladders_ (the  
version he’d grown up with was actually called _Chutes and Ladders_ , American kids apparently being too wimpy to handle two-dimensional printed snakes on a game board) and maybe the maps J.R.R. Tolkien hand-drew for _Lord of the Rings_. It was weird, astoundingly beautiful, and slightly Tim Burtonesque.

It was, absolutely, Loki to a “T.”

For all that he probably couldn’t have known he’d left it there--translated, undoubtedly, from the mind of Kurt, who’d traveled to and from Castle Doom before. Kurt, that was, of the faultless sense of direction.

“Damn,” Tony breathed, “I kinda love your _Pabbi_.”

“We know,” the kids chorused.

By nightfall, the towers of a gray medieval city had started coming into view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They all went multilingual on me this chapter, so here are some translations (if not already translated in the text).
> 
> Some German:  
> "Götterdämmerunged" = twilight of the gods(ed)=Tony's new verb for when the kids go full-on Grand Opera on him (in the style of composer Richard Wagner's _Ring Cycle_.
> 
> Some German:  
> Gott im Himmel=God in Heaven  
>  _Herr Unfug_ =Mr. Mischief  
>  _Ach du lieber (Gott)_ =oh, my dear God  
>  _kleiner Bruder_ =little brother  
>  _lieber Herr Professor_ =dear professor  
>  _andere selbst_ =other self
> 
> A smattering of Russian:  
> ебаный=fucking  
> бабушка=babushka=grandmother  
> чертов=a different word for fucking (Natasha, it seems knows many)


	10. Castle Doom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki confronts Baldr and Stefan Szardos. Tony and the children find a way into Castle Doom. Natasha sends out an S.O.S. Kurt concludes his time with Victor von Doom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both versiond of the British science fiction/horror movie _Village of the Damned_ were based on the novel _The Midwich Cuckoos_ (1957) by John Wyndham). The plot involves an English village full of blonde-haired, glowing-eyed, telepathic children all born on the same day, two months after the entire village mysteriously fell into unconsciousness. No good can (or does) come of this. Tony clearly uses "Village of the Damned" instead of "Midwich Cuckoos" because the Marvel Universe already has a group of children known by that name--telepathic sisters who run the Cerebro mutant detection machine created by Charles Xavier.
> 
> Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), genius scientist and leader of the Fantastic Four, has the power of stretchiness.
> 
> In the U.S. (I have no idea how it works elsewhere) you often dial 9 or 99 to make a call to an outside line through a business phone system.
> 
> "doing a solid"=doing a favor
> 
> If-then statements (aka conditional statements) are a hypothesis followed by a conclusion (in mathematical terms : p-->q, which is read as "if p then q"). A conditional statement is consider false if the hypothesis is true and the conclusion is false.

* * *

“You grow old, Baldr,” Loki said, by his Craft twisting his once-brother’s name to a thing of crushing disdain. He pulled himself up to the absolute limit of his height, not allowing in himself the least sign of weakness or pain, or any sign that he would not emerge as absolute victor from this contest of magic and wills.

He would not even display his great relief that Kurt had teleported away. He only hoped his friend was well, and safe, wherever he had gone.

Instead of all he might have shown, Loki put on the air of haughty indifference that had been his mask over many years. Proud. Uncaring. Superior. That was the face he showed the world no matter how his heart cried out, and that was the face he would show Baldr now. Not since boyhood had he revealed anything but mockery to an enemy, and all the gods forbid he show more than that in this moment.

“Your time upon Midgard seems to wear on you,” Loki continued. “To what ends have you spent your days? Consorting with armoured madmen and mouldering hedge-wizards back from the dead? Does such company befit a mighty prince of Asgard, son of the Allfather?”

A long, sibilant sound of pure fury escaped Baldr’s throat. His control over his own temper had ever been a fragile thing, the need always present to have whatever he desired in that very instant, with no delay, and never to be gainsaid. To receive contempt from his victim, his pawn, his plaything of old surely maddened him like an old bear afflicted by bees.

Let him be maddened, then. Let him.

Loki gave a fierce, feral smile.

He paced closer, skirting the room's barren walls, laying out a skein of _seiðr_ to contain all within.

The magic drained him rapidly as its power rose, a faint, discordant hum in the air, but Loki gave no thought to holding back. Not now, in this moment Tony might name, “All or nothing,” when all that mattered was that he kept his friends, and his children, safe from any who might harm them.

He paused to send a handful of brief messages flying, harmless arrows loosed out into the air, intended to soothe instead of damage. They would know, at the end, his dear ones, that he cared for them with everything within him. If he died this day, he died loved, and had not lived on long enough to ruin that tender emotion. Someone would grieve for him. His name would live on as more than a curse--not Liesmith or Trickster, but Loki.

As Loki, he would be mourned.

“What was that, what was that?” the Szardos growled. “Be silent, filth of Jötunnheimr!”

Loki had to laugh. That this repellent thing should call him filthy, when already the knot of Craft that bound unclean spirit to undead flesh had begun to fray, and the corruption of the grave crept over the creature's face.

A scarf clumsily wrapped the wrist that had no power to heal. The creature's eyes had turned dull as clay, its cheeks stony grey. Szardos cringed by Baldr's side, as if imaging the mad prince, who cared for nothing save himself, could actually care for it.

By this same Szardos, Loki realized, had the sticky-dead _seiðr_  infested Castle Doom.  Conscienceless, the wizard, dead-but-undead, hunted its rightful owners and stripped from them those powerful threads, those fibres of light so tightly intertwined with the threads of their lives that one could not be put apart from the other without those same lives coming to agonizing ends, all of it, decaying life-threads and stolen  _seiðr_   borne away before the corpses grew cold.

All Szardos had been had come to nothing in the end but the un-life of a magical ghoul, a thing that preyed upon beings more brilliant and more beautiful than such a creature could ever conceive of being. Truly the theft of another’s Craft was the only magic this Szardos brought to its new existence, though the feedings of its youth, the vampiric appetites whetted on the rich wine of Kurt’s great Neyaphem might, drove it on to greater greed and greater crimes--never could there be enough power to steal, enough lives to steal, enough cruelty in all the world to satisfy its unending need.

Loki truly wondered in what dire place two creatures so vile as the Szardos and Baldr had managed to meet.  In the Underworld of Underworlds, perhaps.

Where Thanos had come upon his fallen, shattered, and desperate self, a poor thing without defense, flotsam to be repurposed for whatever task the Mad Titan decreed.

“Oh, does it hurt you? Does it hurt?” Loki mocked in false sympathy. “You know, do you not, that there is no healing to come?  That your master will allow you to crumble into pieces before he spares a scrap of Craft for your repair?”

Loki glanced up then, studying his once-brother’s crystal blue eyes (so like Thor’s and yet so unlike, no trace in them of courage, love, valor, innocence). Baldr's face in these days, for all the maturity of its creases and lines, was that of a spoilt, greedy, unhappy child.  He saw--as Baldr's Midgardian companions could not--that such a face bore not the least concern for allies or followers or the harm that it caused.  It perceived only its own needs, its own immediate wants, and beyond all that, longed for the destruction of anything that brought hope or joy to any being but himself.

Where, Loki wondered, was the fearful, tyrannical giant of his youth? Where the vast shadow that haunted his childhood dreams? Had such a creature ever actually existed in any realm outside a young boy’s terrified imaginings?

Loki guessed that it had not.  A grief for the frightened boy he had been came over him--and with it, surprisingly, an appreciation for the for the man he had become, a man able to glimpse the spoilt baby's pout behind the terrifying giant's mask, and thus would never by frightened by the sham of it again.

Loki's lips parted.  He drew in a slow breath before saying, thoughtfully, “I am not afraid of you now, never-brother. You may hurt my body—and indeed I am certain you will—but you possess no other power over me. My dear children—never yours, for all your foul blood in their veins—are good and clever and kind. They will never fall in with your dark designs, if that is what you have meant for them. They incline not toward the destruction of worlds, but to the building of them.”

Baldr drew nearer, so close Loki could smell the breath of him, like something gone rotten behind the the falsity of his handsome face, the evil clear to be seen by any who cared to look.

“You shall learn to fear me again, young Loki,” Baldr said.

"Shall I?" Smiling, Loki considered. “No, foulest spawn of our father, I think I shall not. You have made a mistake or two, by my reckoning, in your dealings with me, and I leave to your imaginings what perhaps those missteps may be. First, though, I must ask a question of you--the men at-arms you brought to face me—out of your own fear, I can only imagine—are their minds their own, or have you enthralled them?”

“Why should you possibly care, little brother?” Baldr sneered, though the first embers of fear had began to kindle in the recesses of his eyes.

Loki shrugged and widened his smile, making his own eyes glitter like green stars. “Not thralls, then? Willing servitors? Fortunate Baldr to earn such loyalty from his men!”

Loki eyed the minions of Baldr, a handful of hard men, larger than the common lot for Midgardians, not a one of them less in bulk and height than his brother Thor. They surely thought Loki himself nothing, merely an overtall wisp, nearly to weak to stand on his feet.

Others, in the past, had made similar mistakes.

"A pity for them," Loki said. "Had they merely been thralls, I would have surely spared their lives. As it is..." He lifted one shoulder in something like a shrug, turning on his once-brother his wild, merry grin.

His _seiðr_ was weak—frighteningly so—but strong enough yet to unspool further, and to wind, all unobserved, in gentle tendrils round the legs and arms of Baldr’s henchmen, a tap-root pressing finally, over each beating heart.

“He’s up to something,” cried Kurt’s false brother, by Baldr’s side. “I smell it in him! Stop this traitor to your will, my prince! Stop him now!”

In that moment, Loki snapped tight the net he’d made.

Baldr's warriors fell like flowers cut from their stems, jaws stretched wide with cries they had perished to quickly to utter, their eyes rolled to white in their heads. The lovely life-force flooded into Loki's body, rich and many-layered in its savour, like the best of wines.

 _Even the lives of such men has its value_ , Loki considered--though to his surprise he found that he would have greatly preferred _not_ to kill them, no matter how his body cried out for the sustenance they provided.  Any protest of, _But they were evil!_ did little to salve his conscience.  Within his increased strength he also felt great sadness.

 _Kurt, beloved friend,_ Loki thought, _What have you done to me?_ But he did not mean the words, and certainly any criticism that might be seen within them.

 _After today_ , he told himself, _No more of this life for me.  Should I live, let me bring up my children in peace, and never again venture into battle_

By the force of Loki's will, though, the knives on the dead men's belts, small in size but of deadly sharpness, spun up into the air, sheathing themselves anew in the eyes and throat and sluggishly-beating heart of the servile Szardos  before his own magic could answer the threat.

Even as Szardos fell, and his stinking blood sprayed, a powerful line of _seiðr_  slashed open the wall of his chest.  The pierced but still-beating heart leaped forth into Loki’s hand.

He regarded the organ with narrowed eyes as the beat slowed, and slowed, until naught remained but a feeble twitching, then nothing, not the least tremor.

The heart in Loki's fist crumbled to dust, the grit of it dribbling between his fingers.

“I am no longer a boy, Son of Odin,” Loki said, feeling in that moment a weariness of his own heart, and a disgust, that he had again been forced to these ends, with new blood on his hands, even if the blood had been that of wicked men.

Loki turned to walk away, needing in that moment to be far from Baldr’s presence, ignoring the mad laughter of that sound behind him.

 _Why laughter?_ Loki had time to wonder, in the instant before he stepped into the sticky trap of dead _seiðr_ , scentless, invisible, that Baldr had laid for him, the Szardos’s final gift.

The stickiness entrapped his legs, flowing over his hands and face. Driven on by cruelty and rage, it wound him up in its cloying threads until the breaths he now struggled to bring in were made half of the clinging stuff.

Loki gasped and choked, railing against his own carelessness-- _How, how could he have been so foolish, and so blind, as to not be wary of such mischief?  When had he lost his every instinct, the instincts of the wise fox to always evade the snare?_

 _And so what becomes of me now?_ Loki asked himself. _Death, or imprisonment again within the armour?_

 

 _Oh, let it be death,_ he pleaded of the unkind universe.  _Oh, please, I pray of you, let it be death this time._

Bright spots of color flashed in Loki's eyes, as if the cruel universe denied his plea in a sharp display of its stars, just as it had on the night it seemed he might tumble his way through all the nights that had ever been, and fall for all time from the Bifrost.

Now, as then, all the worlds flew away into darkness, leaving Loki without defense.

* * *

The kids put their heads together—literally—foreheads touching, black hair mingling with frost-white, mingling with the brindle thatch of silver/brown/black on Fen's head. Delicate shoulders brushed, little hands clutched at little hands. Their sendings made a faint hiss in Tony’s head, like when the music on a cassette tape had ended, but the spindles still turned in the machine. 

Tony knew they were discussing something, in that funny way they had, but their actual thoughts ran at such speed his puny human brain couldn't hope to follow. There were definitely days (especially in recent times) when Tony had to feel the whole “genius” thing was open to debate. He suspected that when the Lokettes shared brainpower, he was, relatively speaking, about as smart as a kumquat.

"Yo, Village of the Damned," he called. "Wanna clue me in?"

“You are far cleverer than than a kumquat, worthy-of-sagas Uncle Tony,” Hela assured him, breaking the huddle. She patted Tony's hand kindly, and only a little condescendingly.

“At _least_ as smart as a pineapple, I'd say,” Jöri murmured, giggling.

“Smartass,” Tony mouthed, then stuck out the tip of his tongue. Fen giggled too.

Hela claimed her heritage--the Loki eye roll. "Onward," she commanded.

Her loyal subjects--including Tony, naturally, onwarded.  Fen even changed into a wolf again (though not a particularly large one), to sniff his way around Castle Doom, pressing his elegantly-shaped nose to the cobbled street, now and then, to take a particularly deep breath.

When he did this, his eyes turned blood red and the thick ruff of fur around his neck stood on edge, making his shoulders look even broader than his Uncle Thor's.

They’d traveled about three-quarters of the way around the castle before Fen stopped completely, did the street-huffing thing again, then started scratching almost frantically at what appeared to be a high, sheer wall of blank granite.

Hela gave a soft laugh. “Clever brother!”

“What is it?” Tony asked, not even sure why he bothered to whisper. There appeared to be nothing and no one around for miles. He suspected the good folk of Latveria had developed an instinct for when their dictator was on a tear, and kept their heads down accordingly.

“Breathe here, on the stone,” Hela said, indicating a point on the wall about as high as her hand could reach when she stood (with perfect poise and balance, of course, like dancer _en pointe_ ) on tip-toe.

“I could lift you up…” Tony suggested, feeling slightly self-conscious about the whole subject of, uh, _fucking breathing on a wall_.

“It is a lock, of sorts," Hela not-really-explained, adding. a little more impatiently, "You are a living Midgardian. I am not. Breathe.”

As they waited for something to happen, Hela frowned at the uncooperative wall. “This Craft perplexes me.”

“Perplexes in a bad way? Like, a _particularly_ bad way?”

Hela’s smile flickered. “Only perplexes. Though effective, the Craft is stupid and clumsy--made, I suspect, by the one called von Doom. Our magic, _Pabbi’s_ magic, is highly superior, graceful and elegant, without wasted motion.”

 _Well, of **course** it is_ , Tony thought.

“With von Doom’s magic, I'm forced to feel around the lumps and bumps and scar tissues in order to find the heart of the Craft.  It wastes energy.  I find it distasteful."

Hela might have been talking about TV dinners.  Or ice hockey.

"I prefer our more refined way."

“You are _so_ Loki’s daughter,” Tony said.

“Was there any question?” Hela responded, with one perfectly Lokiesque raised brow. “Now, Uncle Tony. if you would…?” she gestured again to the wall.

Feeling stupid, Tony breathed, in pretty much the same way he’d once done to leave secret messages on the car windows of Fayette Delarue, an experienced older woman of twenty he’d crushed on, with the pathetic painfulness of which probably only a five-foot two-inch engineering prodigy of sixteen would be capable.

While not returning his affections, Tony remembered, Fayette hadn't shamed him.  She'd written her own notes on the glass in return, words  of encouragement (though, alas, not the kind of encouragement he'd hoped for) and kindness.  Tony still remembered Fayette fondly.  She could have crushed him and then stomped on the pieces, but she hadn't.

"Try again?" Hela said.

Tony breathed a second time.  Almost instantly, the apparent stone began a crinkling noise, pulling back into itself to form a perfect small tunnel, one a little tight for Tony's broader hand but perfectly sized for any of the kids to reach through.

If it wasn't a trap, that was.

Tony made a wordless cautionary squawk as Jöri did a kind of snaky Reed Richards thing,extending his delicately-scaled arm to unnatural lengths and sending it through the tunnel. A sound of breaking glass and grinding metal followed, the to-all-appearances-blank wall breaking into two parts. One slid up, one slid down, both making an irritating nails-on-a-chalkboard scraping sound, and dust gusted out into the alley, leaving all of them (except for Hela, who remained immaculate) looking as if they'd been thoroughly dredged in dirty flour.

As an end result, a windowless corridor stretched out in front of them.  The ceiling looked a little low even for Tony; and the best thing he could say about the width was that he thought his shoulders would fit.  With maybe a little squeezing/

"Where does this tunnel lead to? Munchkinland?" Tony ducked his head.  This was not going to be comfortable. “Good thing I’m not claustrophobic,” he grumbled.

Fen turned back into a boy, sneezed, and became a wolf again, scratching on the stone floor with one big, clawed paw.

The dust must have been an inch deep.

“I don’t like it,” Jöri complained. “It’s damp, and it smells putrid.”

“But _Pabbi’s_ in here, and Uncle Kurt,” Hela said, adding as an afterthought, “The others as well, of course.”

“Of course,” Tony echoed. "Since my team might actually appreciate a little rescuing, too--and, you know, one of them _is_ your uncle."

He stepped inside, setting a good example like the grown-up he was.  The kids, appearing to be only minimally encouraged by his act of bravery, pressed as close as they could to Tony fore and aft, all three of them obviously just as reluctant as he was to leave behind the daylight.

The moment the furry tip Fen’s tail cleared the threshold, the top and bottom parts of the door crashed together again.  Even the small hole  Jöri had reached through to get them inside had disappeared, leaving the blackness absolute around them, so thick and dark it even felt hard to breathe.

In that moment of stale, cramped, dusty blindness, the message from Loki brushed against them like a current of clean, fresh air, so tender, so loving, and yet so absolutely final Tony felt frozen, as if nothing in his life would ever feel worth moving for again.

 _Loki, Loki, babe,_ he cried out in his head. _What did you do? Where have you gone to?_

Fenrir let out a horrible, despairing growl, going BIG then shrinking again in the narrow corridor--but not so small that he couldn’t knock the rest of them sprawling.

Hela and Jöri yelled as their brother bowled them into the dust. Tony took a giant paw to the face that bounced him off the right-hand wall and left his forehead trickling blood.

After too short a time, they couldn't hear even the slightest echo of Fen's heavy footfalls pad-pad-padding down the ink-black hall, and even though they all still felt wolf-boy's fierce, focused presence, Fen refused to answer their calls.

If Fen was going to find his _Pabbi_ , Tony felt fairly sure he'd succeed--his wasn't the mind of someone would give up for just nothing.

After that... Tony pressed his fingertips against his closed eyes, as if trying to block out the sight of all the scary things he totally couldn't see.

After that, who fucking knew?

* * *

Natasha decided she hated every last individual inch of Castle Doom. For one thing—the name?

Truly stupid.

For another (putting aside such minor considerations as the damp, castle-y old athletic sock smell, the harsh-yet-somehow-insufficient  lights, and the total lack of anything that could pass as decor), if she had to head down another dead-end corridor, then turn around and head back up said corridor again just to get from Point A to Point B, she thought she’d scream. The fact that she'd had to do it a hundred damn times in the past hour? So very not amusing.

On the positive side, Natasha actually experienced a little pop of joy whenever she ran into one of Doom’s minions and handed him his ass--in a figurative way of speaking. She’d always found kicking other people in the face to the point of their unconsciousness to be a fabulous reliever of stress.

She’d left quite a tidy trail behind her by the time she reached a particular door, one stenciled with the word, “Dining” in fluorescent (if faded) orange paint.

This stencil piqued Natasha's interest.  It was the only door she'd spotted that had been marked in any way.  How the hell the staff found their way around Castle Doom in ordinary circumstances (for, say, the sake of cleaning) would be anyone's guess.

The "Dining" door was locked.  Securely (another obvious sign that all was not as it seemed).  Natasha made it open. The room behind that door looked less like a mess hall of any description than it did like a control room.  More specifically, it resembled the control room from a mid-60’s episode of _Doctor Who_ , the kind in which the ostensible instrument banks had clearly been constructed from old kitchen range and refrigerator boxes spray-painted pewter, with Christmas lights to shine through the "controls" and make them look advanced.  Natasha wouldn't have been in any way surprised to see an alien monster jump out at her, looking as if it had been thrown together from spare toilet parts and carpet samples.

The thing that struck Natasha as especially weird was that, although the equipment looked exactly like sprayed corrugated cardboard with dials stuck on at random intervals, the prehistorically-clunky tech also looked as if it might--just maybe--do whatever it was intended to do.

Natasha never claimed to be a Tony Stark, but she knew her way around a machine or two. She certainly knew (equally prehistoric as the practice might be) how to send out a message in Morse code. Why Doctor Doom, who could indisputably give Tony a run for his money when it came to building strange-but-useful tech, kept a functioning telegraph set in a room marked "Dining" in the middle of his ass-backwards castle, Natasha wasn't going to comment.  However, she also knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. (probably for some bizarre reason known only to Nick Fury) possessed similar equipment.  She also knew the current call-codes.

Tapping out a quick: SOS AVENGERS PRISONERS CASTLE DOOM LATVERIA BW turned out to be no more than a couple minutes' work.  Natasha didn't wait for anything by way of an answer. Her next goal (possibly) was to go hunting for a phone.

Did you have to dial "9"  or "99" to get an outside line at Castle Doom?

What she hadn’t expected, as she slumped in the creaky vinyl-covered office chair behind the equipment table, pondering where in hell that wished-for phone might be, and which way she should head to to next, was for the machine to give a happy little chirp and jump to life again, clicking merrily away with the message, “SOS ACKNOWLEDGED HELP SOON PC.”

PC? Her very own (or rather Clint's very own) Director Phil? As in Coulson?

“Damn,” Natasha breathed, “That was quick. And unexpected.”

Which left her with the conundrum (her telephone-finding mission no longer being required), of, What next?

Little Blue had asked her to look for Loki—but, really, Loki? Was she really going to make Mr. God of Lies, Destroyer of New York, her priority, especially when  meanwhile, down in the dungeon lay her discombobulated teammates.

Would she even be able to snap them out of whatever currently messed with their heads to actually march them upstairs from the dungeon, the better to be extracted?

Most of the team remained docile enough that she could probably manage, but what about Thor, who was not only supernaturally strong and too damn heavy to be easily wrangled, but mentally deranged as well?

She also needed to keep in mind the consideration that if she at least appeared to do as Little Blue asked, the chances of him doing her a solid in return, by teleporting Avengers to the place of her choosing, would be greatly improved. Even so big a sweetheart as Kurt might not be so happy to be her ally, or to do as she asked, if Natasha abandoned his new BFF to the tender mercies of Doom.

“Damn,” she said again, and kicked over a fucking dot matrix printer. Just because she could.  After, she slumped again in the creaky chair, swinging idly back and forth as she ran a number of "if-then" scenarios through her head, none of them leading to any air tight answers to what Natasha thought of as "The Loki Question."

All of that, though, went straight out the total-lack-of-window five seconds later, when a sound came through the wall that snapped the horns straight off her "Loki, Yes or No?" dilemma and sent her rocketing out of the creaky chair.

That sound wasn’t a scream or a wail or a groan, it was that line in Clint’s favorite movie, when Inigo Montoya says, “ _Do you hear that, Fezzik? That is the sound of ultimate suffering_.”

For Natasha (to whom the topic of suffering wasn't exactly new), the movie sound-effect for ultimate suffering had struck her as fairly, "Meh.  Okay.  Not really."

The sound that came through the wall of the "Dining" room... that was the real thing.  It hit her in the guts and made her feel sick, until she would have done anything, anything, not to have to hear the sound for even one more second.  It came straight from the bowels of hell as described to her by her Babushka, on those nights when Natasha later went to bed, and kept a light on under the covers in a vain attempt, not only to keep away the darkness but to keep away sleep, because she feared having to dream.

If she had let that sound go on without trying to help the person who made it, no red would ever have been expunged from her ledger, and hell would be constantly around her, wherever she might run.

Natasha did run away from the primordial equipment room, but not into a place of hiding.  Instead, nearly frantic, she searched and searched for the place in Castle Doom that held that noise, because the red must be erased and, equally, the person--whoever it might be--who hurt enough to make that noise must be rescued, must be comforted, must be someone Natasha helped. It was required for her  continuation as a member of the human race.

Natasha had no choice.

* * *

When Kurt got right down to it (and ignoring the fact that the man was clearly, at the least, middle-aged), he found something oddly childlike in the person of Victor von Doom.

Part of that may have been the drink.  The large carafe Doom's servant had brought to him must have easily held the equivalent of nearly two bottles of a strong, sweet, fragrant dark-red wine, much like the wines Kurt remembered drinking with dinner in the Bavaria of his youth.  To avoid comment, Kurt allowed his host to pour him out a cup.  Von Doom downed the rest, and when the carafe was drained dry, the tyrant had moved on to long swigs from a bottle of the national drink of the neighboring country, Symkaria--a potent clear liquor called Foc Alp.

Having been memorably (and unpleasantly) introduced to Foc Alp on his sixteenth birthday, Kurt was not even remotely tempted to join him in his tippling, but he made von Doom laugh uproariously by telling him the story of the fateful introduction, and what occurred after.

The day's events confused and saddened Kurt, who always did want to see the best in everyone he met. The contrast between the Doctor Doom of his previous experience (who had caused hurt and harm to so many), and this lonely, friendless, tipsy man who was like a little boy at the circus, struck him as nearly heartbreaking.

That von Doom wanted more and more of Kurt’s stories and songs, that he cheered at his juggling and his magic tricks and applauded his acrobatics, showed Kurt more and more clearly in that aging yet scarcely-scarred face the expressions, the wonder, of the child who once must have been.

How badly he wanted to call that boy, that Victor, back again, to tell him all the anger and the bitterness could end, that he could be forgiven. That he was lovable, and could be loved again.

Sometimes, in their life together, Logan could only shake his head at Kurt’s imaginings.

Other times, Logan would hold him tightly, and soothe him, because it could hurt so badly to see such things in the faces of those meant to be his enemies that Kurt could scarcely bear the pain.

 _Gott im Himmel_ , how he wished he had Logan there just then, to hug the sorrow away from him.

Last of all von Doom staggered—still without his iron mask—to the great sheepskin rug before the fireplace, stretching out face down in front of the low-burning flames. He summoned Kurt close with clumsy gestures. “Sit, my demon angel. Sit.”

Kurt sat, though he had to cling tight to his patience at this point. His leg hurt badly, and he’d lately received a sending from Loki that felt too close to a farewell not to worry him.

“Boots!” Von Doom waved wildly. “Have them off!”

Kurt knelt, removing the metal-plated things as he was commanded. The boots weighed kilos each, so heavy wearing them to walk must felt like being chained to the earth by anchors.

To Kurt, who always moved so lightly, it seemed like a self-enforced hell.

The boots also had significant lifts built in. In truth, von Doom stood no taller than Tony, or perhaps Kurt himself.

Sad vanity, indeed.

Von Doom rested his head on Kurt’s knees, watching the flames with half-closed eyes. “I have been pretending,” he said.

“Have you?” Kurt answered softly.

“I have been pretending that we are old, dear friends,” von Doom told him. “That you have come to visit, to drink with me and amuse me. Is it wrong, to play at such a foolish thing?”

“No, Victor.” Kurt rested his hand lightly on the older man’s hair, stroking gently. “How could it be foolish, to wish to spend time with a friend?”

“Your life has not been easy, my friend. Your life has been no easier than mine—harder, I suspect. The world is not kind.”

“Not always,” Kurt agreed.

“Yet you are kind. You are a good person. And you will be gone when I awake, yes?”

“Because I’m concerned for my friends, not because I've run away from you, or haven’t valued our time together.”

“Such a kind boy,” von Doom said. “Such a good boy. If I kept you here I would hurt you, in the end. Hurt you badly, I fear. I will not keep you. You have been good to me, Kurt Wagner of Winzeldorf and Salem Center. I will not keep your friends, either. You are all free to leave Castle Doom, with my good will. You shall not see me again.”

“Thank you, Victor, for your generosity.”

Von Doom stroked the end of Kurt’s tail tenderly. “I would die of grief if I hurt you, I believe,” he murmured, “But I would hurt you, if you stayed. If I tried to keep you here. I am that sort of man. Will you remain, at least, however, until I sleep?”

“Gladly,” Kurt answered, his hand on von Doom’s shoulder, holding perfectly still as the older man’s breathing deepened, as his eyes drifted shut, his face weary but peaceful.

When he was sure von Doom slept soundly, Kurt slipped out carefully from beneath him and rose, stretching out the kinks and the pins and needles from his body, his arms, his legs. He fetched the green cloak from where it lay, draped over a chair, and returned to the fireplace, tucking the thick wool gently around the sleeping man, gazing down at him for several minutes.

“Good night, Victor,” Kurt said at last. “And may sweeter dreams attend you.”


	11. And In the End...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony, Hela and Jori make their way into the dungeons and meet up with The Avengers. Fenrir helps Natasha in her mission. Loki and Tony share a moment before Loki faces Baldr once and for all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title, this time was inspired by a snippet of Beatles lyrics: “ _And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make..._ ” (from " _The End_ " on the 1969 album _Abbey Road_ ).
> 
> diddley squat=nothing The term originated in the 1960s, most likely from slang combining "doodle" (excrement) and "squat" (defecate). It's really just a sillier way of saying something doesn't mean (or isn't worth) shit.
> 
> lollygagging=wasting time The term, first documented around 1868, evolved from an earlier word "lallygagging." Both originally meant "fooling around" in a sexual sense, but lost that meaning sometime in the second half of the 20th century.
> 
>  
> 
> Red Light, Green Light being played at Hemlock Overlook Regional Park's Ropes course.
> 
> Statues (aka Red Light, Green Light in the U. S. and Grandmother's Footsteps in the U.K.) is a children's game played in many countries, though with different rules. It usually involves an "It" (another child, not a scary clown played by the son of Dr. Selvig) who issues "stop" and "go" commands to the other players at random intervals. At "stop" they're supposed to freeze and anyone caught moving is out.
> 
> The Alaskan Malamute is a large (75 - 100 lbs.) powerful working dog with good endurance. Originally bred for hauling heavy loads, they later were used as sled dogs and now are popular family dogs. Like other Huskies and Malamutes, they're more "wolfish" looking than most breeds.
> 
> The description "cute as a button" is meant to describe something as small and pretty. The button in question isn't the fastening but the flower, as in the garden favorite "Bachelor's Button." "Cute as a bug" means something sweet and charming. It's a shorter form "cute as a bug's ear," which originated in the American South in the late 1800's. Since "cute" was originally "acute," with the same meaning we give the word today, and bugs are supposed to have good hearing, the meaning shifted from a simile for being perceptive to one for being... well... cute.
> 
> "on the fritz"=not working properly The phrase first appeared around 1897 and originally meant something going wrong in a really bad way, but the meaning softened over time. There's no definitive history of its origin.
> 
> _"Yellow Submarine"_ is a song from The Beatles _Revolver_ album (1966).

* * *

Tony envied the easy time the kids had navigating that damn corridor. Even at his less-than-impressive height, moving along such a cramped space had been Claustrophobia City from the get-go, and the further they went, the smaller that fucking architectural horror got, making Tony feel as if he’d fallen down the rabbit hole and would soon be in drastic need of an Alice in Wonderland “ _eat me_ ” cake (or was it a _“drink me_ ” bottle?—whichever made you little instead of big) to continue on his way.

He already had his knees bent, his shoulders curved in so tight he could hardly get a decent breath, and his chin tucked to his chest, all of which resulted in him having to do a half-turned-sideways stompy troll-walk, plod-plod-plod, while the kiddoes just breezed lightly ahead, brightening their way by doing some sort of ethereally glowy child-of-Loki magic thing.

Tony’s only consolation (which wasn't much), was the secure knowledge that if ol’ Victor von D ever tried to come down this way, he and his stupid, pointless armor would get hopelessly wedged within a hundred meters.

Chin-tucked-to-chest didn’t give him outstanding visibility, meaning Hela's sudden stop and reversal caught him totally off guard and nearly knocked him on his ass.  As it was, he'd probably be left with a bruise the size and shape of her hard little head on his midsection. Hela may have looked fragile, but she packed a hell of a wallop.

"Empress!  A little warning!" Tony protested.

“Here! It’s right here!” she cried out, her elegant little glowing hands hovering over what appeared to be a wall made from a completely blank sheet of stone. “Oh, Uncle Tony, I can feel them!”

“Feel what? People? Ancient fossils embedded in the rock?  Seriously, what gives?”

No answer from Hela, but those small, white hands traced a runish kind of shape over the surface of the stone.  Within seconds, the area she'd touched morphed from mildew-gray rock to what looked like only-slightly-dirty glass. Tony had happily eaten at restaurants with smudgier windows.

He semi-squatted to peer through that clear section, and realized he could see through to the other side.

At which point Tony’s heart did a weird little syncopated beat. Yes, he certainly made out the shapes of people—not just _any_ people, but _his_ people. His team.

He could make out Thor sitting slumped on the edge of a bunk, head in his hands. Bruce and Cap sat on either side of him, talking—Steve with measured hand-gestures, Bruce with a lot of agitated glasses-cleaning. Clint, looking fairly slumpy too, held up a wall across the room.

There was no sign of Natasha.

"How do we get in there?” Tony whispered. He wasn’t sure why he felt as if he should keep his voice down, but he did. May it was from a weird sense of spying, or eaves-dropping, though he couldn’t hear a damn thing his teammates said.

“I can hear Kurt,” Jöri said morosely, “But I can’t hear _Pabbi_. Not at all. Can you, Uncle Tony?”

Tony decided to give it a shot. The kids were right—Kurt was there nearby, front and center--exhausted, a little sad, a lot stressed, in significant pain, but perfectly present.

_I’m well_ , the German's distinctive voice spoke up in Tony’s head. _Trying to find Loki . I keep thinking I’ve touched him, then it all slides away from my hands (Gott im Himmel, Logan, how I wish you were here). There’s danger and I’m trying to reach…_

_Take a breath, Kurt,_ Tony advised. _He’ll be easier to find if you get on top of the fear._

_I’m not afraid,_ Kurt answered. _I’m not. It’s only…_

_I didn’t mean afraid for yourself. Afraid for your friend. I know how brave you are, Kurt._

_Von Doom won’t hurt us,_ Kurt said _. He gave his word._

Tony tried to imagine being so naturally honorable that you'd assume you could take Victor von Doom at his word when he made you a promise.

Then again, ol' Victor, he'd been told, _did_ have his own peculiar fucked up sense of honor. Maybe if von Doom made a promise to someone like Kurt, someone clearly honest and trustworthy, it meant something--whereas a promise made to a snarky shit like Tony Stark meant diddley squat.

_We’re free to leave, as far as he’s concerned. He is currently sleeping off the effects of a significant amount of alcohol on the top floor of the castle. It’s the others--my brother and Loki’s--that deeply worry me._

_Well, hang in there, we’re about to come through into the dungeon and we should be able to join in the search fairly soon. Oh, and if you see Fen, corral him or follow him or something. He got completely away from me._

_Is he a wolf still? Could he track Loki where I could not?_

_Probably. Only keep in mind how young he is. He’s a scared kid and my bet says he’s thrown caution to the winds. Don’t let him drag you into something you can’t get out of, okay?_

He felt Kurt’s agreement along with his nerves—and the question clearly he didn’t want to ask--namely, whether Tony himself had heard from Loki.

The not-so-plain answer to that one was:  kinda yes, kinda no.  As in, yes, he felt Loki somewhere fairly near. Anything else felt like a fried egg sliding around a non-stick pan. He couldn’t pin anything down and he couldn't get anywhere close.

_No_ , Tony said at last. I mean... god, Kurt, I wish I could, but I totally can’t reach him.

He sent Kurt their love and signed off. The loss of that contact left his mind feeling sad and empty.

Meanwhile, back in Corridor World, Hela glared at her brother, while in return, Jöri shook his head violently.

“You have plain sight,” she insisted, “And the knowledge of how to do it from _Pabbi_. Don’t be a chicken.”

“It’s just ‘don’t be chicken,’ Jöri corrected, “And I’m not. Only what if I do something wrong? I could hurt you, and hurt Uncle Tony.”

Hela shot him what could only be taken as a “Superior Big Sister” look. “Then we’ll be stuck in the wall and I’ll never forgive you. Just do it. No lollygagging. Now.”

Tony had just enough time to squawk, “Wait—what…?” before the world ripped itself apart in one instant, them reconstructed itself in the next.

The next thing after that--when he was still staggering around clutching his head and wondering which way was up and which was down--someone hugged (Bruce, he guessed, unless Steve had suddenly started feeling more than usually fond of him), and simultaneously asked a thousand questions by everyone else all at once.

“Okay, okay, I hear you, I hear you,” Tony laughed, when Bruce (the hug had come from his ScienceBro) finally released him. “And it’s pretty damn great to see you too, believe me. First off, guys, these are my good friends, Hela and Jöri.” He set a hand on each of their shoulders, feeling their small muscles tightening, and their rising apprehension. "Chill, kids.  This is my team, The Avengers. Capt. Steve Rogers, Dr. Bruce Banner, Agent Clint Barton, and that’s your uncle—I guess—Thor Odinson.”

Thor’s head popped up. He looked none too happy.

“So that’s a no on the uncle thing, Thor? That’s okay, we can work around it. It’s workaroundable.”

Christ, he was babbling. He only babbled when he was nervous—and since when did Tony Stark let himself get visibly nervous? Ever?

Since both kids looked like they'd started up an impromptu game of Statues. And looked glowier than ever.  That's when.

“ _Hvers vegna eigum við skynja blóð pabbi okkar?_ ” Hela asked, glaring right at her uncle and channeling her _Pabbi_ in the most obvious possible way.

“I remember not,” Thor answered, in anguish. “To injure Loki, your...  parent would never have been my intent, and yet an evil memory haunts me…”

“Jör?” Tony asked.

The boy had gone so pale, he hardly had any green left to him, and his ear-frills stood out sharply.

“Our _Pabbi’s_ blood stains this room,” Jöri answered, in a remarkably stern voice for such a little boy. “Not enough to be fatal, perhaps, yet there are signs also of foul magic and great anger. Together these things are worrying.”

“Weren’t you guys the size of hamsters, like a couple weeks ago?” Clint asked. “What’s your dad been feeding you?”

Hela turned her eyes upon him.

Tony wasn’t sure what Clint saw, but it made him jerk back, smacking his head against the wall.

“Whoa! That’s some evil eye you got there, little girl!”

Hela raised her chin, casting her fiery green gaze at each of them in turn. “I see you all, Mortals,”she said, in her crystal-clear diamonds-cutting-glass voice. “And while there is good in each, there are also quantities of petty Midgardian cruelty. I know my beloved _Pabbi_ shed his royal blood to save each of you, yet when all is decided you shall not raise a hand in his aid. Our beloved is broken and ill, you who call yourself heroes, yet have no pity, and this is true of both his body and his mind, sadly, for in his time with our so-called uncles and grandparents, amongst the _Aesir_ , he fared no better. I know not of the Chitauri or this Battle of New York you hold against him, yet I know well there are beings of great puissance…”

“Pwee… what?” Clint said.

“Puissance,” Bruce put in. “Power. Might.”

“Great strength,” Hela continued, apparently speaking slowly for Clint’s benefit. “Capable of overthrowing even the mind of a god, if he is sunk deep enough in suffering. So…” Those emerald eyes flashed at Clint. “As was done to you was also done to him.”

Hela bent her head, quantities of black, curly hair falling forward to veil her face. “And yet, my words fall hopelessly upon your ears. The Shield already approaches and no good will come of anything.”

“What is The Shield?” Jöri asked, eyes wider even than usual with fear.

“That which was feared when first we were taken, my brother,” Hela answered. “The vivisectionists.”

“Hey, no!” Steve protested. “Children, we’re Americans! We don’t do that kind of thing.”

“Indeed, ask the green one what they tried to do to him,” Jöri added cryptically. “Hela, we must find Fen, and Kurt. Kurt will take us from this place again. It’s what _Pabbi_ would desire of us, that we keep ourselves safe.”

“We don’t hurt children,” Steve tried again, sounding pretty broken up about it—mostly, Tony guessed, because he knew he might well be telling a lie he couldn’t force himself to face.

Jöri wrapped up his sister up in a tight hug and the two of them vanished, leaving only a momentary glitter of green and gold where they’d been.

"That went well," Clint said.

Tony ran to the wall where Hela’s window had been, but there was only blank stone in its place. He had no idea if they’d gone that direction anyway, and even his sendings got him nothing. Their minds were completely shut to him, as if they'd decided he couldn't be trust, that he'd come down on the side of his team instead of them.

Which he wouldn't.  He wouldn't, not in a million years.  In a way he even though of them as his kids after all their adventures.

Tony toyed with the idea of just sinking down on the floor and abandoning hope, but that wasn’t going to happen.

He wasn’t going to give up, he was going to find Loki.

He was going to find Loki, and save him, or goddamn die trying.

* * *

“A baker’s dozen,” Natasha thought, not exactly with satisfaction.

She blamed her training. She’d been taught early to stay constantly on the alert, to always stay aware a full 360 degrees around herself, never to take time off for self-congratulations or gloating. But, really, sometimes a woman had to live a little, and Natasha called thirteen members of the Brute Squad unconscious, safely locked behind a big steel door and suffering from difficult-to-heal spinal injuries a pretty damn fine half hour’s work.

People who called her the weakest Avenger were delusional.

As she was sure Blue (aka Kurt) would agree, there was a time for bashing things with giant phallic symbols and calling down lightning from the sky, and there was a time for a little stealth and carefully-honed skill.

Damn, she must have a soft spot for that fuzzy blue boy… Why else would she be doing this?

Natasha even tried saying it aloud now and then, just to make it seem more real.

“I’m going to rescue Loki.”

“I’m rescuing Loki.”

“My next amazing feat will be to rescue Loki!”

Whichever way she said it sounded weird.

And then, even more weirdly, she glimpsed the puppy.

It was a brindle puffball with something of a Malamute, Husky, Alsatian look--a long, snuffly, pointed muzzle and oversized pointed ears-- probably destined to be a Hellhound of Doom the size of a bear when it was fully grown. At the moment, however, it came down firmly in the category of "cute." As a button, or a bug’s ear, however cute that might be.

English idiom was nothing if not strange.

When the puppy saw her, it rolled over onto its back, clumsy mitten-paws in the air, tail thumping like crazy. Despite all training to the contrary, Natasha knelt down, rubbing his (he was definitely male) soft little belly until he wiggled with delight, his doggy mouth seeming to grin as he gazed lovingly up at her with oddly light-green eyes.

Two seconds before he changed into a stocky preschooler.

Natasha only stopped herself from shrieking by clapping her hands over her mouth. Which left her with no hands available to stop herself from falling over onto her butt.

The little boy sat up, smiling as he gazed at her. His eyes were still leaf-green, his hair a brindle-y black/silver/brown (and, actually, remarkably pelt-like). He also continued, undeniably, to be cute as a button.

“You’re one of Loki’s kids,” Natasha said. “You’ve grown.”

He appeared to consider that.

“We all grew very much, at first. Not so much now. My name is Fen, what’s your name?”

“Agent Romanov.”

“Agent Romanov,” he repeated, as if tasting the words. He had an upper-crust sort of British accent, though with a very slight, quasi-Scandinavian lilt.

“Even though you don’t like me, will you help me, Agent Romanov? Jöri’s the one who can open things, not me, and the door is very heavy.”

“Which door?”

Fen stared at her for a moment as if he found her mentally lacking. “This door,” he explained patiently. “The door to _Pabbi_. We need him to talk to us again. ‘We’ are Jöri, Hela and me. _Pabbi_ is our _Pabbi_. We… um… came out of him. When we were newlings.”

“When you were newlings?” Natasha scowled at him.

“Babies?” Fen suggested, and climbed to his feet, reaching up for the door handle--a giant piece of medieval ironmongery. The boy’s small chubby fingers could just reach, but he clearly couldn’t get any leverage.

“There’s humming,” Fen said. “Machines?”

Natasha could hear them now, too, and feel their vibrations in the wood when she stood up and laid her hand on the door.

“No, no, this is a bad place,” the boy said, fear plain in his voice. “This is _mest, mest ágætt_ , the most, most bad place. We were made here. Please open the door. Please help _Pabbi_ , most-respected Agent Romanov, _á líf mitt, mun ég veita þér hvaða blessun í mínu valdi að gefa_. I say to you, as _Pabbi_ promised Uncle Tony, 'On my life, I will grant to you any boon in my power to give.' Please don’t let your hatred for us prevent you from helping."

A weird sensation went through her, one Natasha was hard pressed to place--or maybe the difficulty was breaking the feeling into its component parts. It contained elements of shame, horror, pity… maybe even self-disgust, that this sweet-faced little boy, however odd he might be, thought it necessary to offer her his life just to get her to help him save his father.

Had she really hardened that much? What kind of person hated a child?

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Natasha told him. “I’m going to help you. See, I’m helping. I’m opening the door.” She put her hands on the door handle and tugged. The thing really did weigh a ton.

Still, Natasha managed to haul it open, revealing ahead a long, narrow room insufficiently illuminated by fluorescent lights. One of the tubes seemed to be on the fritz, hissing and flickering in a way that was an instant ticket to headache-town. With the yellow-green light that didn’t really reach the corners, the gray stone walls and the plethora of ducts, pipes and wires overhead, it reminded Natasha of something in a horror movie. Not the fun spooky kind, either. The sick, worst of human nature kind, something like _Hostel_ or _Saw_. The kind she really, really hated.

She’d seen enough sick shit in her life—she didn’t need it for entertainment.

Suddenly, Clint’s extreme love of _The Princess Bride_ seemed perfectly normal.

The torture-film ambiance wasn’t helped by the pair of industrial-sized sinks against one wall, the counters covered with weird-looking instruments laid out on white towels or, just to top things off, a couple of stainless steel stretchers, of the kind most commonly found in mortuaries. The kind with downward-slanting surfaces, and drain holes.

Worst of all, suspended slightly off the ground were two… suits? Natasha’s brain wanted to compare them first to suits of armor, then to space suits, but they weren’t exactly like either, or maybe something like the bastard offspring of both.

They seemed designed to hold the wearer (she somehow knew there was meant to be a wearer, though probably not a willing one) in what she thought of as “figurehead position,” like the well-endowed maidens at the front of old ships (Clint was also a fan of lighthearted pirate movies, no surprise there)—spine arched, arms stretched uncomfortably outward and backward.

The smaller suit was open to reveal an inside like a teched-out iron maiden, all spikes, wires, tubes and probes, the larger suit (much larger, obviously made for someone around a foot taller than herself in height).

Natasha possessed an excellent spatial sense. It was part of what made her such a good gymnast--and fantastic shot. The smaller suit, she realized, though bulky on the outside, had an interior that would fit her perfectly. Those spikes, probes and tubes were meant to go into her, those wires to monitor her.

Natasha felt suddenly sick. Why her? Why not the guys? Wouldn’t they give the Triumvirate of Sickos plenty to experiment on?

“The worst bad place,” little Fen breathed beside her. Then, “We were made here.”

Oh. So that was it. Well, surprise, you bastards. Natasha Romanov was nobody’s brood mare--and, extra surprise, clearly these guys had never heard of the Red Room, and that one particular way it "prepared" its agents.

Only Loki had probably thought the same thing (except there was that one story in the mythology--which she’d read up on after their initial meeting--in which that was exactly what he'd been). She'd thought the story pretty funny at the time, but she wondered now, if it was real, if those events had really taken place.

If she asked Loki, what would he say?

She doubted, having heard his answer--if the god of lies gave her a truthful answer--she'd find the story quite so funny.

Her small companion had stopped right beneath the larger suit, his little arms held up. “ _Pabbi? Pabbi?_ ” he cried out, his small-child voice squeaky with fright.

Several of her Babushka's prayers wanted to come crowding back into her mind.  Natasha pushed them away ruthlessly, and held her breath, counting down slowly from ten in Russian, picturing the numbers as words written in Cyrillic.

“Let’s see if we can’t get him out,” Natasha said, trying to soothe Fen with her words.  Her voice came out falsely bright, bordering on hysterical, a voice she'd never heard come out of her mouth in all her life.

What if one of the Triumvirate came in? What if she was overpowered? What if she ended up inside that second suit, hanging there, helpless?

She'd go crazy, completely crazy.

More than anything in the world, Natasha hated feeling scared.  The emotion made her furious, made her want to lash out, to destroy. She almost wished for Goon Squad members number fourteen and fifteen to show up, just so she could take them down in quick order, the same way she took down her previous baker’s dozen. It would have been a fabulous stress reliever.

Instead, Natasha began to examine the larger suit, wherever she thought she felt a seam, muttering, "It's okay, Loki. We'll get you out. We'll get you out. It's okay."

There wasn’t a button, a crevice, a lever anywhere, though she accidentally ripped off a couple nails trying to pry her way into one or two of the more obvious lines. Meanwhile, her small companion leaned against one of the suit’s dangling legs, singing a mournful and fairly unnerving song in what sounded like the same language he’d spoken before, while sobbing as if his little heart would actually break into tiny wolfy pieces.

Quite frankly, though Natasha completely sympathized, the song also got on her last fucking nerve, until she just couldn’t take it, and punched the damn armor full-on with her fist.

At which point, as she stood swearing and rubbing her bruised and split knuckles, the suit cracked open like a clam-shell and dumped the so-called god of mischief to the floor. He landed in a confusion of black, curly hair, skinny arms, and skinny legs, those long, long limbs pointing in every which direction.

Natasha couldn’t even tell if he was breathing, what with the way the kid was swarming over him, sobbing at maximum volume.

She knelt, and tried prodding his shoulder. “Loki?”

God, he looked trashed: dead white anywhere that wasn’t smeared with blood or nearly black with bruising, patches of skin rubbed raw wherever his bones came near the surface, ugly punctures that lined up with the spikes inside the suit.

Natasha had seen a lot, most likely more than anyone she knew, but never any fucking thing like this.

This made water-boarding look like a day at the Waterslide Park.

She felt sick.  Literally throw-up sick. And meanwhile Loki's son, his poor little kid, was whimpering and nuzzling him, trying to cuddle up against Loki’s half-flayed skin, performing rapid-fire transformations from small boy, to wolf-cub, to small boy again, while Loki made this sound…

Like the ultimate suffering sound again, but softer. And worse.

Natasha pushed at his shoulder, the sound increasing in intensity, if not in volume.

As Loki settled, and some of that mop of black hair fell aside, she saw what caused the decrease in volume. Two different masks of metal, plastic and rubber covered Loki’s face, not strapped on like normal masks, but bolted into his bones. The sound she found so hard to take was Loki—supercilious, snarky Loki—sobbing.

Natasha suddenly found herself all the way across the room, retching over the nearest industrial sink.

“Uh… Nat… Don’t freak out. It’s only me. Tony.” A hand touched her back, resting warmly between her shoulder blades, but Natasha was almost too distraught to notice.

Welcome to the goddamn story of her life. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the very worst of the worst, something more terrible comes along.

Natasha being who she was, though, her descent into hell may have seemed to go on forever, but really didn't last more than a minute or two.

By the time Tony asked her, “You okay, Nat?” she’d pretty much snapped back to being Agent Natasha Romanov again—at least until he started testing the charge on an electric screwdriver.

“Stark! What the fuck?”

“We’ve gotta get the masks off before he completely freaks out."  Tony's usually-mobile face had gone totally expressionless. "He’s heading for the edge as we speak.”

Apparently satisfied with his equipment testing, he sat cross-legged on the floor, lifting Loki’s head into his lap, gently stroking back his hair.

"Okay, Lokes," Tony said, in an actual soothing voice, "You’ve got one job, and that’s to hold things together while I do this. Fen’s going to take your hand—nice and careful, big guy, _Pabbi’s_   pretty ouchie—and maybe we’ll all sing a song. You want to sing a song, Puppy?”

When the screwdriver started to whir and Tony was leading Fen through a slightly off-kilter version of " _Yellow Submarine_ ," Natasha took that as her signal to leave.

Her business was to do the damage, after all, not repair it, and she’d already let go of enough of her cool for one day. She was damned if she’d get the fucking vapors again in front of Tony Stark—or whatever you wanted to call those two minutes when she'd completely lost her superspy cool. She felt bad. She felt really, really bad, and she couldn’t give those emotions head-space, not for anything. She was the Black Widow, cold as chilled vodka.

Besides, Natasha thought she'd almost certainly heard an aircraft over Castle Doom.

Soon S.H.I.E.L.D. would be here. She would wait for them, and then everything could go back to normal again.

* * *

“You were so brave, babe,” Tony murmured, stroking Loki’s hair. Free of whatever crap he’d used in Asgard to subdue it, that hair somehow remained clean, unexpectedly crazy-curly and soft, so soft. Loki's skin had a similar quality, unbelievably touchable in a way Tony couldn’t even describe.

Not even sure what the hell he was doing, Tony stretched out on the floor by Loki’s side.  Fen went big and cuddled him from the other direction, until Loki warmed up a bit and stopped shivering.

“I’m so sorry,” Tony choked out. “I’m so sorry this was done to you. Or not just this… Everything, I guess, babe. Yeah, everything. I wish I could have spared you some of it. All of it. Whatever I could.”

“Kind... “ Loki managed to breathe. He touched Tony’s wrist lightly. “Better soon, beloved. Help me sit?”

“Just rest, baby,” Tony said. “It looks like they worked you over, huh, cramming you back into that thing? So it might be best if you just lay still and saved your strength until there’s someone to give you some legitimate help."

“Fen,” Loki answered. “Against Fen to strengthen…” His eyes started to roll back in his head, but he fought hard to get control again, until Tony felt so guilty he slid and scooched him upright (for such a skinny guy, Loki continued to be amazingly fucking heavy). Fen scooted forward too, allowing Tony to lift Loki up so that the giant wolf could slide beneath him, the god sinking into the deep-furred curve of Fen's side.

Tony lay there too, facing his god of mischief, kissing him gently, touching him, talking all kinds of shit about New York, the tower, how great life could be there—no obligation, but if Loki wanted him… if the kids… if he thought…

He felt so safe, somehow, despite where they were, so warm, complete, joyful with the god in his arms. He imagined going to sleep like this every night, waking up like this every morning, and wondered how a being who nearly defined chaos could bring him such peace.

“Yes,” Loki murmured, drifting into sleep with his face pressed to Tony’s shoulder.

“Just so you know, I think I may worship the god of mischief,” Tony whispered, when he was pretty sure Loki couldn't hear. “In fact—you know what?—I’m pretty sure I do. In fact, I suspect I'm falling in love with him.”

He fell asleep bathed in that peace, listening to Loki breathe.

 

When Tony jerked out of sleep, cold and feeling strangely empty, both the god and his giant furry son had gone, and the sounds of battle filled Castle Doom.

_There is a terrible machine!_ Loki’s voice cried out suddenly in his head, a jolt Tony felt fairly sure had drop-kicked him out of Dreamland. _Terrible… Ah, Tony! Ah, gods, gods! I send Kurt to you. Destroy it! Ah, please… Destroy it, please!_

Even from a distance, Tony felt the agony vibrate through his love’s skin.

_Gods, what had he been thinking? Why had he left? To go after Baldr?_

_Are you crazy? What do you think you’re doing? Babe, you’re too weak for this, too hurt. It’ll kill you!_

_Time to finish_ , Loki answered, sounding perfectly resigned.

And that was it, until Kurt popped into the room.

“Did you hear?” the young mutant asked, his face tense and unhappy. “We’re wanted.”

“Yeah. I heard,” Tony answered shortly. “Let’s go.”

He found the machine easily enough. The damned thing was noisy as hell, lacquered black as Darth Vader’s helmet, and nearly filled a whole small room.

Beneath the sound of its mechanics lay the murmur of what it actually did, purring along at a level just above what Tony’s ears could consciously hear—though Kurt covered his own delicately pointed ears immediately, his tail switching, face contorted with pain.

Tony turned his friend around, giving him a shove toward the door. “Find Loki and the kids!” he yelled over the clanking and hissing. “I’ll deal with this. Go!"

Sticky wetness dripped over Tony's upper lip. His nose had started to bleed. Just a trickle, but there it was.

“Fucking Doom and his fucking machines,” Tony sighed, glad to see, when he glanced around the room, that someone had thoughtfully left behind a collection of tools.

"My own personal weapons of mass destruction," he said, grinning a little despite the worry and stress. With a choice selection at hand, he got to work.

* * *

_Fear not, sweet one_ , Loki sent, twisting his fingers in his son’s silvered-midnight pelt. The magical protections he commonly carried went to Fenrir now, that Baldr and von Doom would not harm his dear youngling, whatever they might send his way. Without them Loki felt naked, stripped bare, and yet he knew no fear, only a weary inevitability as he drew upon the last reserves of energy he might ever experience in this cycle of life.

He felt glad to know that Hela and Jöri remained safe with Kurt, that he’d sent to them his love before he began this last short journey. He knew the comfort of having enjoyed an interlude of warmth with Tony, after all his doubts and despair, and the great horror of having been forced again to his suit of pain and despair.

There had been new strength in that, as well—in feeling cherished, in feeling special in another’s eyes. He was glad, too, not to have died there, encased in shame and terror, but to stand here instead beside his belovéd Fenrir. To face his ever-foe, here at the end, with his son to help him stand up and be strong, when on his own he might perhaps have bent, and weakened.

Loki did not think he would have broken, liked to think that he would not, but Fen's presence assured his courage.

_Just a little smaller_ , hjarta minn,” Loki sent lovingly, opening a small side door instead of the great double portals of state that led into the chamber of von Doom’s throne--all the trappings were there to be seen: the lofty ceilings and tall windows, the floor-to-ceiling hangings the Latverian ruler had unfurled in praise of himself, a dais of stone at the far end of the chamber, all in shades of green, black and grey.

Not a single reflective surface.

_Would I have lived in joyless pomp such as this, had I remained a king?_ Loki wondered, _and knew very likely that he would._

He had wanted so badly to rule, and yet the very restlessness native to his spirit completely undid him. The daily troubles, the minutia, the need to deal every hour with a thousand fiddling things, the sense that he had already spent enough time amongst the _Ӕsir_ to last ten thousand lifetimes such as his own.

Even before he’d been stolen away by Baldr and his cronies, Loki had been ready to vanish into one of the cracks between the realms and make his escape. To declare to Odin, “Wake up, never-father, you may have the entire _fjandinn_ mess back again, with my blessing.”

Loki laughed inwardly. Amusing to think Baldr had unwittingly rescued him from his self-imposed Hel.

He had only wanted to be someone, only wanted to be important—such a childish dream!—but he received not even that satisfaction when he wore Odin’s face. He was only a ghost of whom no one spoke well. A fool, a madman, a criminal, presumed eaten by carrion, with no real effort made to recover his bones.

At least now his children would mourn him if he did not succeed. Was there comfort in that? Loki thought there might be.

A sensation long forgotten, nevermore expected, to actually be cared for--and yet, he felt no desire for any loved one to suffer through that loss. He must be both courageous and strong, as he had never been before. He must not make mistakes, foolish, vainglorious or otherwise.

_Only a little smaller, Fen, to pass over the threshold_ , Loki sent.

He son shrank to pass through the door, then immediately became immense again, the fur standing up in a stiff ridge along his spine. Von Doom’s throne room seemed even larger once they entered, the sort of chamber that produces great echoes when empty. It smelled dusty, a little dank. Spiders spun their webs in the corners of the window frames. The desolation of the place—out of all the desolate places Loki had traveled to, in the Nine Realms and between—felt nearly overwhelming. And if this was the throne room, then where was the throne?

Nowhere to be seen, unless…

Ah, there it was. So clumsily hidden, with nothing like his own finesse.

“A pocket universe, brother?” Loki said, pronouncing the name of “brother” with careful mockery. “That’s a bit simple for me. Rather like hiding behind the draperies when the toes of one’s boots show from beneath. What is that, Baldr? No lies? No endearments? No boasts or threats? That is hardly like you, who always has so much to say.”

Loki began to walk a circuit of the room, weaving a pattern with his steps, weaving magic, binding Baldr where he sat, in the throne of von Doom. He let his voice drop low, hoping it would not falter, for his throat felt burningly sore, an aftereffect of the muzzle Tony had so lately removed from him.

“I shall tell you a story, brother,” he began. “One I’m almost certain you know…

“There is _Ginnungagap_ , full of mists,” he began, weaving the might of the great abyss in with his words, weaving his words in with his steps, his _seiðr_ flaring again to life again, fed by Loki’s Craft even as it fed the Craft itself, a perfect circle.

“Full of mists, containing nothing,” he continued. “Containing absolutely everything that would ever exist, a paradox of infinite possibility.

“There are the _Nornir_ Three, each a _Jӧtunn_ as I am a _Jӧtunn_ , forever spinning their many-colored threads, woven all around in _seiðr_ and light, surrounded in death, fate, life. Surrounded by a vast wealth, a dragon’s hoard, of stories, just such a story as I tell you, Baldr. You cannot hide from me forever. You cannot run. Even now you appear.”

This was true. Baldr began to take form, like a reflection shown in a rippling pond as a stirring wind dies down, insubstantial at first, but coming more and more clear: first the squat grey shape of the iron throne, then Baldr’s night-coloured armour, then the pale gold shades of his face, his hands, his fair hair.

“Urðr: all the stories that were,” Loki intoned, as his once-but-never-brother’s features began to sharpen. “Verðandi: all the stories that are. Skuld: all the stories that must, someday, be. This is our story, brother. The story of my life, despite all the hurt with which you burdened me. The story of your death. Try now to spin it out in your favor.”

Beside him, Fenrir gave a low whine, and seconds later a low and angry buzz came to Loki’s ears. In that moment, he realized the balance of his magic was upset. He spent it faster than he fed it, but it only needed to last a little. Only a little longer now, and all would be concluded.

“Once there were two princes… Is that not how this particular story begins?”

Fen’s whine deepened to a growl, almost soundless, very deep in his great wolfish throat. Loki sensed his son grow even larger by his side, but did not look. His head pounded and he felt suddenly sick, but he did not falter. Not so close.

Not so close to the end.

He only cried out to Tony. Tony would help him.

“Once there were two princes: one was light and one was dark. One was good and one was wicked. One was powerful, bold and courageous. One was slender, devious and sneaky. One fought bravely, with weapons, like a man. One fought cravenly, with magic, like a woman.

“For it is always better, is it not, to bash, to break down, to destroy?” Loki went on, and though Baldr had come completely clear, called entirely back into this Realm, he could scarcely see him.

Loki's heart beat oddly and his nose dripped blood. Only his tight grip on Fen’s fur kept him upright. Not merely the magic hurt him, but something else besides, a weapon aimed at magical creatures like himself.

And Fen, his marvelous Fen, took injury too, though slowly, due to the wards Loki cast over him.

From his own body something vital drained almost more quickly than Loki could detect. The vibration of it rattled through his bones and overheated his blood, and his son growled constantly, shaking his great head as if he could shake the noise from his ears. Loki forged ahead.

“That was not the truth, the real story anyway, only a small, fractured sliver of the looking-glass, a later bit from a longer tale. The truth is, there were four brothers, whose father was a wizard and the king of a mighty race, and the second of the four—wicked being--betrayed the rest.”

They had reached the dais. Father and son padded forward with soundless steps. “Baldr was that second brother, bright as the sun, and so beautiful, so beautiful, he could easily blind all who looked his way. Everything he had was the best— _Breidablik_ his wondrous hall, his miraculous ship _Hringhorni_ —and yet he wanted more, always more.” Loki leaned forward, pressing his palm flat to Baldr’s chest. “He took me. You took me. You ruined me for all time, brother, you and your Hel-bedamned Father between you, when I was only a boy. I have known no peace for a thousand years and more, and you now felt a need to come back for another try? You could not merely leave me alone, as I left you? You will never stop, Baldr. You will never stop, and whoever blames me for your death never-brother…”

Loki paused to catch his breath. It burned in his chest, and tears of blood, unwillingly shed, rolled down his cheeks.

“I no longer care if I perish,” he said softly, “Just so long as I end you first.”

Loki set the tip of his index finger against Baldr’s brow and, shutting his eyes, pushed into him every last remaining filament of his _seiðr_ , every icy crystal of his _Jötnar_ sorcery, every bit of Frigga-taught Mage-Craft, all he had learned in his extensive travels and readings, last of all the strange Midgardian elemental magic with which his once-love Myrddin had gifted him.

When it had all gone, Loki stood trembling, scarcely able to keep his feet.

“I will never know who I ought to have been,” he choked out, the grief overwhelming. “I will never know. You stole my self from me, Baldr.”

His once-brother did not answer, would never answer anything again. His eyes flicked restlessly within their sockets and the skin of his face hung slack over his bones, as if, within moments, he’d become an old man. Blood dripped from his ears, mouth, and nose.

And none of it changed anything.

Baldr would not injure another, that was true, but Loki could never go back to the boy he had been. He staggered to the edge of the dais and sat down heavily, the tears he wept just as bitter and salty as they had been when he was fourteen, and all this began.

He took a long while to notice that sounds of savagery had begun, the shattering of bone, the ripping of flesh, and when he did hear, he covered his face with his hands.

_I thought it was what you wanted_ , Fen sent to him, surprised.

“I want my sweetling,” Loki said. “Come to me, my son?”

The Fen who came was not a great wolf, but a sturdy small boy with thick, untidy hair. He climbed up into Loki’s lap and Loki breathed in his scent, which was only partly the smell of blood, but mostly the odor of clean young child. His _Pabbi_ held him a long while, silently, with something near desperation.

“Story?” Fen suggested, after some time had passed.

Loki laughed softly, nuzzling into his hair. “Yes, my insatiable one."

“Once,” he began after a moment, “There were two brave brothers and a clever sister…”

 

When Tony and Kurt found them later, when the machine had been shut down, they were cuddled up together, beyond the dais and its horrors, in deep sleep despite the noise of battle all around


	12. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony, Loki and the children wait in von Doom's throne room for the inevitable arrival of S.H.I.E.L.D.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> " _Schlaf jetzt, hübsches Mädchen_ "=sleep now, pretty girl
> 
> "down for the count"=completely defeated (in this case by the need for sleep) The phrase comes from the world of boxing, where if a boxer who's been knocked out can't get up by the count of 10, his opponent wins the match.
> 
> "That ship had sailed"=it was too late for that to happen. This one comes from a pretty practical origin: if the ship has already left the dock, it's too late to board.

* * *

“Honestly, Kurt, I could help.” Tony offered, though to tell the absolute truth he really, really, really didn’t want to. Chances were, his help with the task in hand would result in some significant cookie-tossing on his part. Yes, he was squeamish. He fully admitted it. There were a million excellent reasons why he'd become a genius engineer, not a genius surgeon.

Kurt clearly read exactly how much he _didn’t_ want to be helpful, and gave him a small, slightly stressed grin.  Limping to the nearest wall, he tore down one of Victor von D’s ceiling-high “ _All Hail ME!_ ” wall hangings, dumping about a kilo of dust onto his curly dark head in the process--clearly von Doom hadn't been keeping up with his basic household chores. 

“ _Ach du lieber Gott!_ ” Kurt snapped, fighting his way out of the clinging, dusty green folds, then going into an extended fit of sneezing.

“That didn’t go as planned,” Tony sympathized.

“Not entirely,” Kurt agreed, coughed a couple times, sneezed again, and tried to shake the crap out of his abundant hair.

“I still like the idea of just stacking up the chunks o’ Baldr on Victor’s chair and leaving them there—kinda like a special host gift in thanks for the fabulous time we’ve had as his guests."

“Tony,” Kurt chided gently.

“Do you always have to be so honorable and decent, Fuzzy?” Tony asked, though not in a mean way—he honestly wouldn’t want Kurt to be any different than he was. Kurt as he existed gave him hope for the world.

He shifted a slightly-restless Jöri on his lap, soothing him by stroking his soft, frosty hair, folding the boy's hand gently in his own.

 _Good thing the kids are sleeping_ , Tony thought--partly because, although they’d been absolute troupers, all three were completely done, down for the count, but mostly because wouldn't have wanted them to see what had become of their bio-dad/sometime-uncle--though he guessed, for Fen, that ship had totally sailed.  He couldn't help but wonder exactly how much, if anything, Fen would remember of what he’d done. Nothing, if he had his way.

Tony just wished he could give them a nice warm meal--maybe some mac 'n' cheese--then tuck them into three cozy little beds instead of them having to lie on the cold stone floor of a none-too-clean throne room. But then, he wished he could give Loki about a thousand square meals and proper medical attention from someone who wouldn’t scream or run when they found out he was a pretty damn alien alien.

Or, worse yet, the kind of doctors who'd want to jump in and perform some kind of sicko experiments on him.

Because, stick a fork in him, Tony was pretty much done too. He found himself drifting off into a half asleep-half awake state, daydreaming about dining on an excellent steak with a crispy green salad to the side, a glass of good single malt to finish, then stretching out in his  wonderful huge bed with its superlatively excellent mattress, beneath his big fluffy duvet (kinda like the guy in that Peter Gabriel song, " _Big Time_ ," with a snow-white pillow for his big fat head). Yup, that was what he wanted, to be there in his expansive, expensive penthouse with just the slightest buzz on, and Loki…

_What the actual hell?_

He’d been right on the edge of something there, a fantasy both brilliant and terrifying, and not at all his standard garden-variety erotic kind of thing—those were a dime a dozen with him and, actually, kind of meaningless.

No, it was a dream of something both entirely more magical and absolutely pedestrian. It was a dream of just having Loki there, sharing his life with him. Learning each other, reading together, or watching TV, eating ordinary meals, loading the dishwasher and folding the laundry, going to bed side-by-side (with or without sexy times to follow) and waking up the same way, all tangled-together limbs and scary bed-head, sharing warm first-thing-in-the-morning kisses.

It seemed so, so impossibly sweet, unobtainable and so close it was right at his fingertips.

Fuck, what was wrong with him?

Tony shook himself out of his stupor to see Loki’s eyes half open and watching his face.

Loki's first words surprised him.

"What is a dishwasher?" he asked.

Tony had to clap his hands over his mouth to hold in a giggle-fit--then he noticed the tiny smile turning up the corners of Loki's mouth.

Loki was fucking teasing him.

“It could be yours for the asking,” the god said hoarsely, that time clearly not teasing at all.

“Let’s say I’m asking, then.” Tony cupped Loki’s cheek, running his thumb along the scary-sharp line of his cheekbone, shivering a little at the perfect and almost-too-soft alien texture of his skin.

“Are you?” Loki shut his eyes again, turning his face a little into Tony’s touch. It hurt him to see how damaged, how absolutely weary, his god of mischief appeared.

“I’d say yes, definitely, I am,” Tony answered.

“Then,” Loki told him, hardly above a whisper, “My response is yes.” And he was out cold, dead to the world, just like the kids.

“Because I love you,” Tony told the sleeping god, “That’s why, you know.”

Kurt dropped down beside him, his look so questioning his tail might as well have been quirked into the shape of a question mark.  Instead, though, that tail moved to curl gently around Loki’s wrist.

Kurt gathered Hela into his lap, probably needing something comforting to hold on to, just like Tony did.

The tiny goddess roused enough to murmur, “Uncle Kurt,” before turning her face to his chest.

“ _Schlaf jetzt, hübsches Mädchen_ ,” Kurt told her gently. His shoulder pressed against Tony’s, but he didn’t move away. Tony didn’t really mind, either.

“If we get out of this all right,” Kurt said, “I have a friend who may be able to help Loki recover. Hank McCoy, he is called, a very clever man. He’s the best doctor among us, and accustomed to treating a number of physiologies. He's the one who sent Kitty and me to Bruce in the first place, and started my part in this... adventure.”

“So he owes you big-time at this point, having fucked up your life completely and nearly gotten you killed a dozen times?”

Kurt laughed. “It’s been quite... ah... interesting, certainly.”

“I’ll take good care of them, Kurt. I will.”

Kurt studied him with those bright, unblinking, yellow eyes. Damn, he could be hard to read when he put his mind to it.

“What?” Tony demanded.

“Things may soon spin out beyond anything we can plan. The presence here of S.H.I.E.L.D., the reaction of your Avengers, even how Asgard responds to what has happened…”

“I shall take the blame for all,” Loki said, struggling to sit up.

Tony set Jöri gently aside to help. Loki clung to him, breathing hard, before he returned to his default of straight back, squared shoulders, nothing here to see folks.

“Let Kurt take my children in the blink of an eye, to hide them in a place of remoteness until all is safe. Will your Logan help you in that, dear friend?”

Kurt rested his hand gently on Loki’s shoulder, and Loki covered it with his own. He must have been deeply in shock, because not only were his fingers mangled, but there was something distinctly wrong about his wrist. His skin, right down to his lips, was bled-out white. He should clearly have gone straight to a hospital, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

Tony knew something passed between the two by the flickering of their eyes, but that was their business, not his. He was just glad Loki had such a good friend, one who would go to the wall for him—he wondered if Bruce would do the same for him, or Rhodey, or if someday barriers would come up of so-far-and-no-further, the way they had with Pepper, when he called out to her right before the Chitauri universe opened before him, when he’d wanted so badly just to hear her voice, just to say goodbye.

Maybe that’s why he hadn’t fought for her, at the end, hadn’t come up with anything to counter her declaration of, “Let’s be friends.”

“I’m going to move the children away from the dais, off to one side,” Kurt said softly. “Jöri and Hela are waking, and it sounds as if the battle’s about to end."

Tony realized Kurt was right. The smell of burning filled the air, but the constant hiss-bang-BOOM of weapons being fired had definitely died away.

He watched Kurt lay Fen gently on a console table against the far wall, then crouch down to talk to the other two, the kids nodding at him in agreement even as they yawned and rubbed they eyes.

Seconds later, Kurt bamfed, presumably up into the high rafters, where the shadows hid him completely and he’d be poised to take the kids when and if things went south. Having seen the young mutant in action, Tony had no doubt in his ability to do exactly that, in the face of S.H.I.E.L.D. and everything else.

Hela and Jöri clutched at each other like Hansel and Gretel on their way to the witch's candy house.

Poor crazy-brave kids, who'd never known one moment’s peace in their short lifetimes. If he ever got them to his tower he was going to spoil them to the point of insanity, over any objections Loki might raise—they’d have ponies and Legos and ice cream and every kind of action figure ever made. They’d have bedrooms done up exactly the way they wanted and get great educations and order exactly the kind of pizza they liked on movie nights.

Most of all, they’d be loved every minute of every single day. They’d never be made to feel like nothing, like their talents weren’t valued, like they were in the way.

They would especially never, ever, have a hand or a fist, a belt or anything else raised to them. Never.

Loki's eyes, cloudy and pained, but alert, watched him closely.

“If that’s all right with you, you know," Tony said to him. “It’s your call.“

“I would stand,” Loki told him. “I would not meet my enemies whilst grovelling before them on the floor. And then I would have you hold me tightly as you can until they come for me.”

"It won't be like that," Tony said, though he knew that was probably a lie.

He helped Loki to his feet as carefully as he possibly could, wondering how on earth the god managed to stand, because, by Christ, he’d been pummeled.

Tony didn’t have the guts to hold Loki tightly, as he’d asked, so he held him closely and warmly instead, never wanting to let him go again.

“Your imaginings…” Loki said. “You wish us to be family?”

“I know it’s kinda stupid.”

“No,” Loki answered. “Not at all. It is flattering, that you should care for us so.”

“That’s it? Just flattering?”

The god laughed softly. “No, not at all, sweetness. I have come to care…” He considered that for a minute, and his face looked very young, though his eyes were sad and ancient. “I do not know how I ought to _be_ anymore, but I have come to care.” He raised his hand, brushing Tony’s cheek with his fingertips.

“I have come to care for you.”

“I have come…” he began, just as the huge double doors exploded inward in a million pieces.

“I have come to love you, Tony, so very much.” Loki bent to brush Tony's lips with his own. "So very much," he echoed, then scowled.

“And it seems my brother has recovered Mjolnir. Just now that bodes ill," he said.

A swarm of Avengers and S.H.I.E.l.Dies poured into the room.  The scopes of several dozen weapons trained upon them, marking them with red dots like they'd suddenly been stricken with some almost-certainly-fatal disease.

Last of all, Phil Coulson strolled in, looking tidy and mild-mannered and carrying a shiny black gun the size of his torso.

"Loki of Asgard," he said, in the most pleasant possible voice. "I ask you to surrender." He paused, probably for effect. "Now would be nice."

 

To be continued in _Do Not Forget Us As We Are_


End file.
